Tarbell Course in Magic, vol 1
by LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: All her life, Darcy has wanted to perform magic on stage. When a new act comes into town and auditions for an assistant, Darcy takes a chance and goes in for the part. It's just a shame that the new magician is a creep with an ulterior motive that could ruin everything.
1. Chapter 1

It had taken quite a long time to find him. Of course when he fled, he'd changed his name. After that televised fiasco, everyone hated him, so changing his name and fleeing the country was the first intelligent thing the great ape had ever done.

Somehow, America wasn't a surprising location to find him. Political scandals happened every day in America. Thor would fit right in. But what was surprising was that he hadn't resumed his life of running for offices he wasn't suited for. He'd taken to healing the sick. When Loki read that, he rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. How could the man with views so radical, one appearance on Ísland í dag almost started three separate wars with three separate countries have now turned his sights on making the world a better place?

He had to be in it for the money. American doctors did make a criminal amount of money.

Loki had spied on him from afar for almost two years before the temptation grew too great. He made arrangements to have his things all packed and sent after him if his plans all managed to fall into place. Loki wasn't sure what their father would do if he found out about this little adventure, and he wasn't too keen on letting that happen, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Probably right around the time the movers showed up to empty his apartment out.

He sat in the terminal in some dreary American city on the border with Canada. There were large bay windows looking out at the runways, but Loki couldn't see much through the positively biblical downpour happening outside. Several seats away from him, a group of Americans were nattering excitedly about the fish market they'd been to. Only Americans would be excited about a fish market, Loki thought.

The layover was three hours, and in that time two other flights had taken off from the gate. Loki hadn't even realised how nervous he'd become until the Americans turned their attention to him.

"Wow, do you know magic?" one of them asked.

Loki realised he'd been absently flourishing an ace in his fingers while he stared out the windows. He looked down at the crisp, green-backed Bicycle card and frowned at it, silently blaming it for attracting the Americans' attention.

"Can you show me a magic trick?" the blonde woman asked.

Loki was not in the mood to put on an impromptu show. Never work for free; that was the very first rule of show business. In an effort to get out of doing exactly that, he put on his confused foreigner face and shook his head.

"I sorry. No… I no… No enska… English?" he stammered out, over-doing it to the point of comedy, but the joke was lost on the American.

She covered her mouth and had the decency to at least look embarrassed.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry," she said, holding up her hand and backing off again.

As soon as she was gone, Loki slid the card back into his pocket. He was almost sad he didn't have his flash paper on him, or he'd have just made the card explode into a burst of flame and sulphur. Unsurprisingly, the ignition mechanism was considered a deadly weapon, and had to be left in his checked luggage. What was he going to do with it? Vanish the entire aeroplane out of thin air?

Actually, that could be a rather good one. He pulled his small notebook from his pocket and started scribbling down a few rough ideas as a man with an expensive haircut and a blue uniform stepped up to the kiosk by the gate. For a moment, Loki dared to hope he could finally be on his way. And then flight 373 to San Diego was now ready for boarding, and Loki wondered if he'd ever get to leave. He'd only been there a few hours, and already Seattle was his least favourite place ever.


	2. Chapter 2

The classroom had no windows. It wasn't unusual, but it still bothered her. No windows at all, discounting the single, pathetic little safety glass window in the door. She took notes as the lecture droned on, carefully checking the clock every two or three minutes. The class would never end. It would just go on and on forever, and she'd never see the sun again. There were only ten minutes left, but those ten minutes would stretch on for an eternity. It should have been an interesting class, but so far, it had turned out to be nothing but common sense that only an idiot wouldn't already know. It should have been titled "how not to say stupid shit in public 101."

But it wasn't. Calling it politics in media was stupidly misleading, and Darcy wondered if she could get her money back.

When the class finally finished, Darcy had to get to the complete opposite end of the campus in about 30 seconds, which meant she was always about ten minutes late. At least it was just for her TA job, and not another class. And Jane was pretty understanding about it, too. She seemed to be the only professor on campus who understood that UNLV was almost a solid square mile of complication and misery. By the time Darcy got to Jane's office, she was ready for a cold bath and a nap. Possibly at the same time. Jane was buzzing around in a rush, gathering up pages and folders without really looking at what she was picking up. There was a certain method for filing, which after a year, Darcy still didn't understand. Jane's idea of filing was to have a place for everything, which meant keeping the grade reports on top of the coffee maker, and the weather print-outs taped to the desk lamp. It worked for Jane, so Darcy did the best she could to abide by it.

"Going out to the Valley tonight?" Darcy asked as she settled in behind Jane's desk.

"Yeah. Last star party of the semester. Don was going to pick me up, but tell him to just meet me there because Erik needs me out there early," Jane said as she stuffed everything into a large box.

Darcy waggled her eyebrows. "Oh, is this going to be a sexy star party?" she asked.

"All star parties are sexy," said Jane, barely pausing. "But not like that. Gotta go."

She took her box of charts and rushed out of the room, leaving the door wide open behind her. Darcy watched her rush down the hall before pulling up Pandora and starting up her Fallout Boy station. Her job as a TA was about as low-key as jobs got, leaving her free to work on her coursework most of the time. Jane used Windows' little virtual sticky notes to lay out Darcy's tasks for the day, not trusting email or One Note to behave like they should. Darcy checked the desktop, smirking at the new wallpaper Jane had set (something spacey, which Jane probably knew the name of, but to Darcy it just looked like a glowy blue cloud) and closed out the note that told her to enter the grades for two different classes. After quickly changing the wallpaper to the first half-naked male model she found on Google, Darcy found the folders full of half-ass reports and logged into the grade book.

Entering grades only took a few minutes, but the way Jane was always trying to do eight things at once, it was no wonder she needed a TA. Darcy tapped out the grades, bobbing her head and humming along with Pandora. When she was finished, she still had another hour in Jane's office, so she did what she always did when Jane was away, and pulled out her coursework for the world's most idiotic class.

It should have been fun. It should have been about spin and damage control, but it wasn't. It was all about training yourself to keep your more unsavoury opinions to yourself. It would have been much more fun if the reading told you how to voice your stupid, racist opinions in a way that made your stupid, racist constituents unafraid to agree with you.

Maybe that was the next course, and this was just the pre-requisite.

Somehow, Darcy doubted it. A career in politics was turning less and less into something she wanted to pursue. The only way it would be worth it at this rate was if she could get some sort of job working for Mayor Goodman, and then she could say that she worked for someone who sassed Obama. And maybe after Goodman's term was up, the city would re-elect her husband, and then Darcy could say she worked for the guy who threatened to break people's thumbs. That was a political statement made to the press. Kind of. And it hadn't backfired horribly. It just made people like him more.

As Darcy struggled to read the required chapter, she was startled by a knock at the door. She looked up sharply to find Jane's ridiculously-cut med school boyfriend grinning in the doorway. With Don's long, blond hair and trimmed beard, he always looked to Darcy like someone who should have been in Game of Thrones. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, which meant he'd probably broken a few speed limits trying to get to UNLV from the medical centre. If he was doing his residency rounds, it would probably explain why Jane hadn't been able to get hold of him, and why relaying the message had fallen to Darcy.

"She already left," Darcy told him apologetically. "Erik needed her out there early. She said to just meet her out there."

"Oh," said Don. He stepped into the office and cringed. "I don't know how to get there." He spoke with an accent that always sounded like he was trying to cover up another accent, but Darcy could never tell where he might have been from originally. The few times Darcy had dared ask where he was from, he always found a way to change the subject. It didn't take long for Darcy to stop asking.

"Just take the Fifteen north to the Valley of Fire exit. There are big signs for it. You can't really miss it," Darcy said.

Don frowned and dug his phone from his pocket, and then frowned again when he noticed it was still off.

"She texted me," he said dumbly as he scrolled through his messages. "Four times."

Darcy laughed. "Gotta check that stuff more often, dude."

"They don't like us to have our phones on when we do our rotation," Don said as he put the phone away.

"That just means don't get caught." Just like how phones were supposed to be off during class. Nobody ever listened to that, either.

Don shrugged, like he wasn't sure if Darcy was serious or not. "Are you going tonight. Do you want to ride with me?"

Darcy almost felt bad for him. It was kind of a long drive out to the Valley, but it was also an amazing place for the department's star parties. Darcy even liked to go when she didn't have anything else planned.

"Open stage tonight. I'm going there instead," she told him. As soon as she said it, she realised it wasn't actually any cooler to hang go hang out with a bunch of magic nerds. But at least the magic nerds would sometimes go drinking after, since unlike the science nerds, they didn't have an hour-long drive back to Vegas after they were done being nerds.

Don nodded. Darcy was pretty sure he had no interest in the star parties at all, and only went because Jane was there. "Very well. Have fun at your, uh. Show. Thing."

"Yeah. Drive safe," Darcy said, laughing as Don turned to leave, looking dismayed as ever. He always seemed to look slightly dismayed or concerned with whatever went on around him, but Darcy suspected it was secretly all an elaborate act to make people like him. He was nice enough, but there was just something about him that never quite sat right with her. Like, how could a man in his final year of medical school not understand how cell phones worked?

He was hiding something, and not just his accent. But Jane was head over heels for him, so Darcy made it none of her business. Just like the rest of Las Vegas made Oscar Goodman's dubious side-dealings and mafia connections none of theirs. She may not have been born for politics, but she was definitely from Las Vegas, and that was kind of the same thing.

She finished up her reading, and with nothing else to do, decided to just leave early. Denny & Lee wouldn't open their doors for the open stage for another couple of hours, so she'd at least have plenty of time to change into something that didn't look like she only put on because it was clean. She only lived off Flamingo, and the May heat wasn't entirely deadly yet, so she'd walked to class. Walking back home at about six in the afternoon was almost pleasant, if she stayed out of the sun. She cut through the campus to Flamingo, cutting an almost mile-long walk in half. The busy street stank to high heavens as usual, but without the familiar tangy undercurrent of melting tar that came later in the summer. Come June, waiting to cross at the light would be unbearable.

Once she was across Flamingo and closer to the park, the smell of the busy street died away, replaced with the smell of the drying-out flood channel. Some ducks were swimming around in the shallow water down there, dunking their heads in the water and quacking happily. A few more were perched up on the rotting mattress that had been down there for the last three years. Probably because someone got so fed up with bed bugs, they'd just bunged their bed right over the fence. Kind of like the time Darcy got her neighbour to help her throw her sofa off the third-storey corridor and into the dry courtyard behind her apartment building.

The building itself hadn't started off life as apartments. Once upon a time, it had been a cheap little hotel on the outskirts of town. Because once upon a time, two miles off-strip had been the outskirts. Now it was college town, and all the hotels were now cheap housing, with Best Westerns scattered around for anyone who needed an actual hotel.

On her way to her apartment, she stopped by the mailbox to see if she had anything more interesting than bills, though she kind of doubted she would, since she'd got her copy of Genii the week before. But she got even less than bills, so she threw the Vons coupons into the trash on her way to the stairs. There was a lift, but she was leery of it. It was rickety and it squeaked and shook, and she'd once got stuck in it for three hours when it had stalled during a rolling blackout the previous summer. The stairs were crumbling concrete, and still kind of scary, but at least she wouldn't suffocate if they broke. She'd just break her neck.

At least it would be a quick death. She'd take a quick death over slow, stifling suffocation.

Her apartment was west-facing, with a large, square window looking toward the strip — and the bright orange setting sun framed perfectly against the Wynn. The front of her door was hot to the touch, and inside was like a tiny, personal oven. Time to hang the blackout curtains back up. She had two sets of them, because just hanging one didn't actually help at all.

For now, she turned on the air conditioner and swung her door open and shut to try to move some air around. It kind of helped, but not really.

The apartment was a small studio, with a fantastically huge walk-in closet. She kept her bed and all her clothes back there, and managed to have a proper living room as a result. The kitchen was pathetic, but the hotel bath tub and constant hot water made up for it. Not to mention free cable and wifi. Once her apartment was cool enough, she shut the door and locked it, and immediately declared a no-pants zone. She still had about two hours before she had to leave, so she flopped down on her bright blue sofa bed thing that didn't really work as either a sofa or a bed, and turned on the television. The news was on, with its usual parade of death and destruction, interspersed with stories about new hotels opening and closing. They were still excited about the Key Largo reopening, but Darcy was bored with it already. It had sat closed since she was in middle school, so it was kind of cool that it was coming back, but not so cool that she needed to hear about it every day for a month.

Eventually, she found something else to zone out to until it was time to leave. When it was finally time to get ready, Darcy took a very quick shower and put on something that would look good next to a rum and coke in a casino bar. It was a quick drive to the other side of the strip, but too far to walk, and not something she could even think about taking the bus to. For one, buses didn't go down Dean Martin. And it was kind of a shady area, right up against the freeway, and with very little in the way of street lights. The parking lot outside of Denny & Lee was already getting full by the time she got there, with about ten people milling about outside the shop while they waited for Brian to unlock the doors.

Darcy parked in an empty space and got out to catch up with the others who were already there. Most of the people who came to the open stages were guys, but not all of them. A lot of the guys would bring their girlfriends, but there were a few women who came on their own, and some even performed.

"Miss Darcy," Ashton greeted. "Are you performing tonight?"

Ashton was a pickpocket, and a very good one. His act was one of Darcy's favourites.

"Not tonight. I don't have anything new, and you can only cut your own head off so many times before it gets boring," Darcy said.

She had a few ideas for new routines, but none of them really seemed interesting enough, which meant they wouldn't be interesting at all. She'd come up with her beheading routine to see if she could do it without the paper bag Mac King used. The answer was no, not really. So she used a burlap sack, and got a much more grotesque result than would be suitable for an early-afternoon family show.

She stood around and talked nonsense with everyone else until Brian finally showed up from wherever he went between closing the shop and coming back again for the open stage. Denny & Lee wasn't a Strip magic shop, with faux-antique shelves, and cheap, mass-produced tricks lining the walls. There was a small counter with a few expensive props behind glass, but mostly they sold books. Expensive, and often antique books, with an entire shelf devoted to the Miracle Factory. But the majority of the space was taken up by the stage and seating area in the back. There was no charge to attend, whether as a spectator or a performer. It was like some kind of magician's fight club, where everyone would sit in old folding chairs in a room with poor lighting, and have the pleasure of seeing new routines performed in public for the first time. Darcy found a seat in the middle and got comfortable while the shop slowly filled.

"I heard D's back in town. He should be here tonight," Ashton said as he sat next to her.

Darcy gasped. "Oh, I miss him! Where's he been?"

"California, I think," said Ashton.

In the entire time Darcy had known him, D had never had a fixed address. He lived primarily on the road, taking his singularly strange act anywhere he could perform on the street without a permit.

He strode in about five minutes later, heralded by a raucous clatter at the door. Darcy couldn't help but grin, knowing that whatever he'd brought with him was something big and ridiculous.

"D, where have you been?" she called out when he stepped into view.

D grinned widely. "Miss Darcy, always a pleasure." He walked over, and Darcy rose for one of his bear hugs. When he hugged her, he picked her clean off the ground for a few seconds, before putting her back down. Darcy tried to peer around the wall that separated the stage from the shop, but all she could see was the shelf that held all the Miracle Factory books. "So, what'd you bring?" she asked.

"No peeking," he admonished. He sat down across the aisle from her, rocking uncertainly in his uneven chair.

Darcy pretended to be affronted, but it wasn't a very good act. Even she laughed. Before she could say anything else, Brian climbed up onto the low stage, silencing the room without a word.

"We have a few new faces this week," he said, looking out over the small crowd. "We may have to start charging."

Almost everyone responded by shouting 'No' at him.

"Or not," said Brian. "I do have a quick announcement before we get started. Listen up, it's a good one. The Key Largo is reopening, which isn't news to anyone."

"The Key Largo's reopening?" asked D.

"Isn't news to anyone except D," Brian amended. "The exciting part is that I have been told a secret. So I'm sharing it with you guys. They're holding auditions tomorrow at six PM for a magic act. I don't know what kind of magic they're looking for, or if it's for an afternoon show or an evening show. They didn't say in their release. I think all of you could do an evening show, so let's hope it's that. They haven't publicised it, but they'll let you in if you tell them you came from here. I have the release printed out on the counter, so please take one on your way out."

Darcy was tempted, but she didn't think she had enough material to carry ninety minutes. She figured maybe instead of going and making an ass of herself, she'd just go as moral support for anyone else who decided to audition.

When Brian finished with his announcements, he introduced Kayla to the stage. She went up empty-handed, and started by pulling a balloon from one of her pockets. Her act was a simple one, but effective and cute. She asked the audience to tell her what animal she should make from the balloon, and came 'randomly' to chicken. The balloon chicken she made wasn't very chicken-like, and almost seemed to be intentionally terrible. Her act largely played on a perfectly-maintained 'dumb blonde' appearance, and she hammed it up especially for the stage nights. When she decided that the balloon chicken was a big fat failure and burst it with her manicured fingernails, she made a switch so flawlessly quick, Darcy didn't even see when the balloon chicken became a live baby chick. Kayla cooed happily at the confused little creature and patted it on the head before dropping character and bowing properly.

"What are you gonna do with the chick when it becomes a chicken?" someone asked with an insinuating tone.

Kayla scoffed, as if the answer were obvious. "Give him to Lance Burton."

Darcy wasn't even sure why it was funny, but she laughed anyway. Something about Lance Burton always struck her as unintentionally hilarious, and she wasn't the only one. Half the audience were laughing right along with her.

Acts went one after the next, most of them requiring little or no preparation. Ashton picked on one of the newcomers by stealing his watch, his wallet, and one of his shoes so quickly, the poor guy had no idea what had happened until the end of the routine. When D's turn came round, Brian brought his prop out for him. It was a four-foot step-ladder, and Darcy couldn't see what was so special about it. Until D invited her up onto the stage with him.

He had her sit on top of the ladder, and that was when she knew exactly what was so special about it.

"Oh, no. No, no, no," she said, gripping the sides tightly.

D looked up at the cheap rigging above the stage and nodded before picking up the ladder with both hands, Darcy perched atop it and clinging to it for dear life.

"Ohmygodno," Darcy squeaked as she felt herself leave the ground. She closed her eyes as he lifted her even higher, knowing exactly what was happening beneath her.

The ladder lurched one more time, and Darcy went very still as the movement below her started to even out. She was shaking so hard, she worried D might lose the precarious balance he had with his mouth. She didn't dare open her eyes, but she could hear the audience's impressed reaction at seeing a very large man balance Darcy on a step ladder with his chin.

"I'm going to die," Darcy said nervously.

Everyone else laughed, and she didn't know why. Finally, everything shifted again, and she was very carefully lowered to the ground. As she found her feet again, her legs were like Jello, and she worried she might fall down completely. Brian helped her down the stairs and back to her seat before announcing the next performer.


	3. Chapter 3

When Loki told the cab driver where he needed to be, the man gave him a look that suggested his time was being wasted. Loki was well aware that his destination was two streets away, but he was not going to walk it. Even if it hadn't been half a million degrees out, he had too much stuff to carry. And even if he hadn't had so much to carry, he was in America, and would probably get stabbed by someone with tattoos on their neck.

"Just open the boot," he said as he stepped back into the tiny room that called itself an apartment, but which was clearly an over-priced hotel room. While the cab driver rolled his eyes and opened the trunk, Loki fetched up the small black footlocker from the corner of the only room in the apartment. The apartment door locked automatically behind him, being controlled by a strange electronic key that looked like someone had tried to murder an SD card, and failed.

The footlocker wasn't heavy, but Loki pretended it was, just to get the cab driver to stop behaving as if he had better things to be doing. As he settled it into the trunk of car, he pressed his foot onto the bumper and stood up on it to make the entire cab lurch. With his precious cargo situated, Loki deliberately slammed the trunk and slid into the back seat. He didn't say anything as he settled in, focusing instead on trying to adjust his shirt collar so he didn't feel like he was choking. Maybe the necktie was too much. He didn't know how anyone could survive in this heat, because it was certainly going to kill him. And it was only May. It was going to get even worse. Somehow, it would get even hotter than it already was, and he would die because no human being was ever meant to be in a place that got as hot as Las Vegas did.

He resisted the temptation to take off his necktie, if only because showing up moments from heatstroke was marginally better than showing up moments from heatstroke and looking sloppy.

It took less than five minutes to drive around the block from his strange apartment-hotel to the actual hotel. He still hadn't worked out the exchange rate in this country, but he'd been in Las Vegas long enough to know that seven dollars was a cheap cab ride, as far as cab rides went in Las Vegas. Getting to his disgusting apartment-hotel had cost him almost fifty dollars, which he was certain had been a massive rip-off. He paid the cab driver without tipping him and pulled his footlocker from the trunk. As soon as he shut the trunk lid, the cab squealed off, leaving him in the empty parking lot.

The hotel wasn't exactly what he'd pictured Las Vegas hotels and casinos to look like. It wasn't a towering behemoth, taking up a solid square mile of land. It was small and squarish, standing only three storeys at the tallest. He could see the Strip from where he stood, but when he was told the casino was off-strip, he didn't realise exactly what that had meant until he landed in the surprisingly sprawling metro area. Las Vegas was supposed to be a two-mile stretch of road with a few side streets and miles and miles of dirt and sand in all directions. Not suburbia with a gambling problem.

It was all too much for him to even deal with, and far too hot to even try to deal with, so Loki quickly walked to the front doors. Which were on the side of the building, because the front sat so close to the road, there was barely room for a sidewalk. A man stood at the door, glaring at Loki like he was ready to throw him into traffic just for being there.

"We're not open," the security guard said.

"I was invited," Loki told him smugly.

The security guard glared at him a few moments longer before looking down at the clipboard in his hand. "Auditions are through the back entrance."

Loki looked down the side of the building, seeing no sign of any kind of back entrance anywhere.

"It's on the other side," the security guard told him helpfully, pointing through the casino.

"It's hot," Loki said, trying not to pout, and not doing a good job at it. "I'm wearing black. I'm carrying a very heavy parcel, and I've been in this city for two days. Just let me go through."

The security guard rolled his eyes and reached for his radio.

"Can I get someone to escort Harry Houdini here to the theatre? West Entrance."

Loki bowed his head graciously. "Thank you," he said, trying not to sound insincere and sarcastic.

It wasn't long before someone opened the door to let him in. While the outside of the casino had been cleaned up and given fresh paint and a new paving job in the parking lot, the inside was still very much under construction. The main casino floor was mostly empty, with bare concrete flooring and half-finished walls. Someone was playing a radio, but Loki couldn't hear much of it through the sounds of whirring drills and pounding hammers.

He was led away from the casino, toward the back of the building. Out large, floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see an empty pool, which was also in the process of being cleaned up and trimmed down to resemble what he thought a Florida lagoon might look like. The theatre, when they finally came to it, was in a similar state of development. It was the sort of space that had obviously been something else earlier in life, but which was in the process of being converted. There was a small proscenium stage built, but little else. The house was completely empty, not even having any seats installed yet. Someone had set up a large table, with a few office chairs, though whoever that someone was, they weren't around at the moment.

There was, however, another security guard. Loki felt like he was being traded off between the lot of them, as his escort turned to leave as the new security guard walked up to them.

"Which one are you?" he asked, consulting a clip board of his own.

"Loki."

"Loki who?" asked the guard.

How many Lokis could have possibly been there? It hadn't even been a popular name back home.

"Just Loki," he said.

He wondered briefly if he shouldn't just stay in confused foreigner mode permanently. They might ask him fewer questions if he dropped the English accent he'd trained himself to use, and went back to his natural accent which no longer felt natural at all. Who knew an elaborate practical joke could ever come back to bite him on the ass?

"Just Loki," said the security guard as he consulted his list. "Okay. You guys have until six-thirty to set up anything you need to set up. For your safety, we need you to stay in this area, unless you go through the backstage door to the east lot."

Loki looked around, feeling so disorientated he wasn't sure he could point to east with a compass.

"Right," he said instead. "So where do I go?"

"Back here."

He led Loki backstage, and to the green room, which was at least set up to host those auditioning for the headlining act. It was a surprisingly decent size, and if it hadn't been full of people setting up their props, might have been quite comfortable.

Loki found an empty place to sit along the wall, and pretended to get his own props set up while checking out his competition. Most of them were young, dressed casually as if they were waiting to get their driving license photos taken. Even the few other performers out of their twenties were in jeans and sports jackets. Loki felt overdressed in comparison, in his black suit and emerald green necktie. Performing in anything else just felt wrong, though. He'd kept the same look ever since he started pretending to be English, and had become very comfortable with it. He knew exactly where all of the pockets were, and didn't have to fish about for anything, because whatever he needed was always right where it was supposed to be.

Even wearing a different jacket felt wrong.

Even though everything was already prepared, Loki pulled it out of the footlocker to save him that much later on. He checked to make sure none of the bottles inside his comically large picnic basket were leaking, as they sometimes did if he didn't seal them right. Nothing seemed out of order, but just to be safe, he checked the seal on the box of supermarket doughnuts as well.

Nothing seemed out of place with that routine's set-up, so he pulled out the small easel and drawing pad and checked that over. Again, everything was perfectly set up, all as it should have been, but knowing made him feel that much better.

They were each to perform two routines, and it had taken Loki the better part of a fortnight to decide which routines he would do. He still wasn't sure about his decision to lead with a performance piece, but half of his act was performance. They might as well know what to expect from him.

With nothing left to do but wait for his name to be called, Loki sat back and watched the others in the room as they prepared and practised. One of the young men there was teaching his assistant the routine they were supposed to perform. Loki pitied him, but at least he had an assistant. Sooner or later, Loki was going to have to start looking for one as well, to replace the one he'd left in Reykjavík. Now that he was actually in Las Vegas, he was having a hard time faulting Katrín for staying behind. Part of him wished he'd stayed behind as well.

He watched the new assistant learn her role, which was a surprisingly large one to be springing on someone last minute. It was box jumping routine without the box. Rather than shoving the poor girl into a plywood coffin, he used large paper cards, strategically-placed, to twist and contort the shape of his assistant. Even with the girl not knowing the routine completely, it was still impressive.

At precisely 6:30, the friendly security guard came back to the green room and called the first act. Almost immediately, the energy in the room changed from eager anticipation to nervous anxiety, and it was infectious. Some of the hopefuls in the green room with him were clearly out of their element, but from what Loki had already seen, most of them were serious competition. He knew magic was popular in Las Vegas, but he'd seriously under-estimated just how popular it was, and now he wasn't quite the shoo-in he'd expected to be.

After the acts were called, they never returned to the green room. Presumably because they left immediately after, but it was still enough to start to make Loki antsy. The numbers dwindled, and by the time his name was called, there were only three others in the room with him. Even the young magician with the brand new assistant had gone before him.

At his name, Loki gathered his props back into his foot locker and carried them back out to the wings.

"Can you set the second one for me?" he asked the security guard playing the role of stage manager.

"When and where?" he asked.

Loki set up the easel exactly how it needed to be set up, and prayed the guard wouldn't mess with anything.

"As soon as I'm done with the first trick, put this right in the middle of the stage," he said.

The guard nodded. "No problem."

Loki nodded back and exhaled nervously. It had been a long time since he was this nervous, but it had also been a long time since he needed a job so badly.

"We're ready when you are," someone called from the house.

Loki nodded again, straightened his tie, and picked up his picnic basket and checked blanket. With his naïve foreigner face on, he strode out to the stage and smiled a bit too widely. There were four people sitting at the table in the house, all looking up at him like they were getting bored and wanted to go home. Just what Loki needed.

"What have you got for us, uh, Loki?" one of the men asked, looking down at the stack of papers in front of him.

Loki held up his picnic basket. "I thought perhaps we might have a picnic," he said, using his Icelandic accent. Hearing himself speaking English with it was almost jarring, but he managed to ignore it. "I have enough for three more, if you would care to join me?"

While his judges decided amongst one another who would be the marks this time, Loki spread out his blanket on the stage and put the basket down.

"I don't bite. I promise," he said, trying to encourage them to join him. He knew doing a performance piece had been a stupid idea, and already regretted it.

Finally, two of the men and one of the women stepped up onto the stage with him and grudgingly sat down on the blanket. Loki sat as well, unbuttoning his jacket so he could sit a bit more comfortably.

"When was the last time you actually had a picnic?" he asked them.

His judges looked back and forth at one another and shook their heads.

"Never," the woman said.

The two men both agreed with that.

"Oh, but they can be such fun. Why don't we have one and get to know one another? What do you all do?" he asked, hoping they would play along, rather than admit to being completely bored with watching several hours' worth of nervous magic already.

"I own a casino," said one of the men. He must have been Fischer, then. Loki had spoken with him over the phone a few times already.

"And I run it," said the woman beside him. The wife, then. Loki hadn't spoken with her, but he'd heard her mentioned during one of the calls.

"And I am the entertainment manager of a casino," said the second man. Loki had no idea who he was, other than someone to impress.

"All different casinos?" Loki asked.

At least they laughed. So they weren't completely bored.

"Well," said Loki. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out his deck of green-backs. "I happen to be a magician. Would you like to see a card trick?"

The trio nodded and played along. Good. Loki pulled the deck from the box and tried to give them a good shuffle, but instead sprayed them everywhere. He glared down at the cards nearest to him, as if it was their fault for misbehaving so badly.

"That was…" he cringed. "Help me pick them up, please."

He started to pick up the ones near him, prompting the others to help. They looked far less than amused or impressed, but that was fine.

"That one there," he said, pointing at a face-down card near Mr Fischer. "The eight of hearts."

Mr Fischer picked up what did indeed turn out to be the eight of hearts.

"And that one. Queen of spades. And seven of diamonds next to it," he said, pointing at two more.

Mrs Fischer picked them up, finding them both to also be exactly what Loki said they'd be. He continued like this, pointing out all of the face-down cards and calling them out as his captive trio picked them up. By the time he had the entire deck back in hand, they all seemed to rightfully accept that Loki had quite deliberately sprayed the cards everywhere.

"Let's try that again," Loki said. He shuffled the cards properly this time and fanned them out. "Everyone pick a card."

He held the fan out to each of them, giving them their choice of cards to pick from the deck.

"Look at them. Remember them. Put them somewhere I cannot possibly get to them," he said as he put the remainder of the deck back into the box, and slid the box back into his pocket.

Everyone hid their cards into their own pockets and settled back in again to wait for the payoff. Instead of delivering it, Loki opened his picnic basket.

"Back home, we used to always go out for picnics on Midsummer. We would take all of our favourite treats out to the woods and enjoy them with nature and a good saga."

He pulled a beaten-up collection of Vinland sagas from the basket and sat it down on the middle of the blanket.

"Have you ever read the sags?" he asked.

Again, the trio all shook their heads.

"Then I will have to read you some," said Loki. "But first, let's eat."

He pulled out the doughnut box and placed it right in the middle of the blanket next to the book, followed by a plate of cheese sandwiches, and four bottles of the darkest-coloured Snapple he could find in the supermarket. He handed the sandwiches to Mr Fischer and pointed to everyone else. "Pass those around, could you?" he asked.

Then he handed the doughnut box to the entertainment manager and asked him to do the same, before handing out the drinks to each of them.

"Go ahead. Let's eat!" said Loki excitedly.

While Mr Fischer began to pass the sandwiches around, Loki picked up his own sandwich and bit into it, having to resist the urge to gag on stale bread and almost certainly rancid cheese. That would teach him to ever shop at a place called Terrible's again.

"Hey, what's this?" asked the entertainment manager as he opened the box of doughnuts. He peered into it, and after a brief moment's hesitation, reached in to pull the green-backed card from the bottom of the box. "Oh, look at that," he said as he pulled his chosen card back from his pocket, and showed it as the same one he'd found in the sealed box of doughnuts.

Mrs Fischer, meanwhile, had noticed something inside her drink bottle. Frowning nervously, she broke the seal on the lid and reached in with her fingers to pull out her own soggy card, which also matched the one she'd chosen.

"Oh, how did that get in there?" asked Loki.

Mrs Fischer shook off her fingers and sat both her drink and the card aside, while her husband took apart his sandwich, only to find it a perfectly ordinary and possibly toxic cheese sandwich.

"I thought mine might be in there," said.

"Why would you find a playing card in your sandwich?" Loki asked, as if a box of doughnuts and a bottle of iced tea were perfectly logical places to find playing cards. He shook his head at the silliness of it and pointed to the book of sagas.

"Mr Fischer, could you pick out a saga for us to read?" he asked.

Mr Fisher picked up the book and opened it to a spot in the middle. As soon as he did, a card fell from the pages and landed in front of him. Loki backed up, holding his hands up and away from the card.

"There. There, pick it up," he said, pointing to the card that lay face-down on the blanket.

Mr Fischer picked it up and laughed when he found it a match to his own card.

"Is that your card?" Loki asked.

"Yes. Yes, it is," said Mr Fischer.

Loki stood back up, inclining his head to his three volunteers. "Thank you very much. You may take your picnic lunches back to your seats, if you like. But probably don't eat the sandwiches. I bought them at a petrol station, and they're not very good," he said. As the other three returned to their seats, Loki nodded back to the security guard waiting in the wings, and quickly struck the first set of props while the second was brought out. He quickly checked it to make sure nothing had been fiddled with, and he was almost surprised to see everything seemed in order.

He picked up the small art box from the bottom tray of the easel and opened it, pulling out the red coloured pencil.

"Do you ever watch those painting shows on television? Where the man will paint something amazing in just an hour, and you wonder how he did it?" Loki asked his audience.

"Bob Ross," one of them said.

Loki hadn't a clue who that was, but he was willing to guess.

"Does he do those paintings?" he asked.

He got several positive responses from the group.

"I always want to try that, but I'm not as good. And paint makes such a terrible mess." He adjusted his cuffs and got a quiet chuckle from someone. "Let's see what I can do, shall we? What should I try to draw? A rose, I think."

Ordinarily, he'd let the audience call out suggestions, and pick a rose at 'random'. But the odds of having one of the four call out the right thing were far too slim. He started sketching out the shape of the rose with his red pencil, carefully working out the proportions. The rose was just about the only thing he could draw, but after years of practise, he had become quite good at it.

"Do you draw?" he asked the group, not really listening to their vague responses.

He worked quickly, switching to the green pencil to do the stem, and then back and forth through a few others for the finer details, murmuring to himself all the while. When he finished, he stepped away from it and frowned.

"Not the best. What do you think?" he asked the group. "Not really something you feel like you can just pick right off the page, I think."

They nodded like they were expecting the payoff by now. Loki pretended to look pleased with himself and nodded right along.

"You didn't get to join our picnic, so you should get something," he said to the second woman on the panel. Loki plucked the sharp little artist's knife from his art box and turned back to the sketch pad.

"Here, let's cut this out for you." He started cutting along the outlines of the rose with his left hand, careful not to slip with the knife. He steadied the easel with his right, loading a freshly-cut rose from the back of it. When he had cut along the entire edge of the drawn rose, he grabbed the drawing delicately with his right hand, the actual rose held in a very precarious back-palm, and quickly pulled it up off the page.

"There we go," he said, looking at it as it dangled pathetically in his fingers. "Let's shake it out to get rid of the wrinkles."

With his hand in plain view, he shook his hand a few times and switched the drawing with the real rose.

"That is for you," he said, handing it to the fourth judge.

"Thank you," she said, turning it over in her fingers to inspect it.

Loki bowed deeply.

"Thank you for your time," he said graciously. While the panel were already starting to discuss his act quietly, he carried his easel back to the wings. As soon as he was out of view, he dropped his false cheer and yanked his tie off. His jacket came off immediately after, followed by the top two buttons of his shirt. He had already been overheated and miserable before the audition, and being under even the small amount of lighting that had been installed, and nervous and desperate for the job, he was certain he was going to melt right there into the floor.

"Fuck this heat," he swore in Icelandic, careful to keep quiet even though he was fairly certain no-one around could understand him.

After taking a few deep, calming breaths, Loki gathered his things back up into the footlocker and started searching for the exit so he could go back to his tiny little hotel-apartment and try to find another audition to lose.


	4. Chapter 4

Darcy was so nervous, she couldn't even concentrate on her lecture. She knew call-backs were going to be announced sometime over the course of the day, and even though she was only a stand-in, she couldn't think about anything other than being called back to perform again.

She kept checking her phone to see if Steven had left her any messages, but her phone remained irritatingly silent.

"Miss Lewis. Do you have somewhere more important to be?" the professor asked suddenly.

Darcy crammed her phone back into her handbag and looked up to the front of the class. "No. Sorry. This is where I need to be."

But not where she wanted to be, and Professor Caine obviously knew it. Darcy swore quietly to herself and slouched in her seat, ready to endure the rest of the hour. She took notes as time dragged by, filling up the page with random words and phrases plucked from the lecture that had been nearly identical to every other lecture, and eventually pointless doodles. By the time the class was finished, Darcy felt like she could crawl out of her skin. She checked her phone before she was even out of the room, but it remained free of any messages from anyone at all. Growling in frustration, Darcy shook her phone about, as if to shake loose any information from it, before cramming it back into her bag.

She had to know. She just had to. And if Steven wasn't going to tell her, she'd go to him and find out. She tried to rush out to her car without actually running, dodging around everyone else trying to get around the parking lot and trying not to get run over by any of them. Once safe in her car, she tossed her bag onto the passenger seat and carefully made her way back out onto Harmon. But rather than going home, she pulled into the Johnny Rockets across from the campus. Because she was totally hungry, yep. It had nothing to do with Steven working there in the evenings.

Inside, she took an empty seat at the counter and drummed her fingers on the surface while she looked nervously around for Steven. He normally worked the counter, but now when she really needed to talk to him, he wasn't there. Typical.

She flagged down one of the waiters as he walked past.

"Hey, is Steven in today?" she asked.

She had no idea who the waiter was, but he didn't look thrilled to be answering her question.

"Yeah, he's on break. But if you're gonna be here, you have to order something," he said.

Darcy shrugged. "No-one's given me a menu, yet," she said.

Sulky waiter man very obviously tried not to roll his eyes as he turned back round to fetch a menu from the other side of the counter.

"Thanks," said Darcy, with extra cheer.

The waiter left her to look over the menu, even though she was probably just going to get the same thing she always got when she went there. She was just about to give up on Steven and leave anyway when he finally came in through the kitchen. When he saw her, his face lit up with a wide grin and he bounced up and down in a way that made him seem like he was trying not to bounce up and down.

"Oh my god, really?" Darcy asked, not even having to ask the obvious question.

"Yes!" Steven said, still grinning. "They want me back on Friday!"

Darcy almost squealed right there in the middle of the restaurant, but she managed to cover her mouth in time. "That's so great!" she said when she was finally able to contain herself. "Do you want me there, or…?"

She already knew the answer before Steven even answered. She was pretty sure of the answer before she even asked. "It's enough notice that Hannah thinks she can get the day off. If she can't, I'll let you know. You were great, and I wouldn't have even got this far without you, but, you know."

"No, no. That's—I totally understand," Darcy said. Hannah was not only Steven's assistant when he performed, but also his sister. Steven wasn't even going to fire her. Darcy knew going in that she was just a stand-in, because Hannah couldn't get the time off work on such short notice. "But, man. You got called back! That's great!" This time, she did squeal just a little bit.

The grumpy house waiter seemed to have heard her, because he cleared his throat entirely too loudly. Darcy looked around at the completely empty restaurant and shook her head in dismay.

"I better order something to appease the restaurant fascist," she said.

"BLT and chocolate shake, coming right up," Steven said, turning toward the register to put in the order.

Darcy bounced in her seat, not sure how she was ever going to contain herself. It wore off quickly though, and by the time Steven brought her the sandwich and shake, Darcy was starting to regret having more or less blown off her lecture. She picked up a small piece of bacon from the plate and ate it while she tried to remember what the lecture had been about.

Professor Caine had been talking about a man. She knew that much. Which wasn't helpful, since about 98% of his lectures were about men. Something about a drunk man? That didn't help either, and Darcy wasn't even sure if she was remembering the actual lecture, or if her brain was just plucking common elements from the class and presenting them as memories of her class that day.

The only thing she did know was that finals were rapidly approaching, and she was not looking forward to academic probation. She flagged down Steven suddenly, deciding she might as well be useful, and not blow off everything important for the day.

"Hey, can I get a box?" she asked.

While Steven fetched a small Styrofoam box from behind the counter, Darcy pulled some cash from her handbag and put it onto the counter. She quickly packed up her meal, waved at Steven to keep the change, and rushed back out to her car so she could be only late to her student job in Jane's office, and not miss it completely.


	5. Chapter 5

Loki stood at the front of a growing queue, looking up at the lighted menu in abject confusion. Three dollars for a pretzel. Three. Surely, it was missing a few zeros. The conversion rate between the króna and the dollar grew more and more confusing by the day, and it was the cab ride all over again. Was he getting a spectacular deal, or was he getting spectacularly ripped off?

"Hey, buddy. You gonna order or what?" the man behind him asked.

Loki turned to face him, ready to play the role of confused foreigner. He faltered, forgetting what he was going to say when he saw an American with tattoos on his neck and a shaved head. He even had those huge holes in his ears, so big you could probably hang a potted plant off them.

Loki was about to be stabbed in a mall, and no-one would care.

"I—Yeah." He turned back round and quickly ordered the most basic soft pretzel, which was at least warm and ready to be taken away in a hurry.

He dodged around the corner, eager to get away from the tattooed American. There were restaurants every few spaces in the mall, but he wasn't sure if he was ready for that sort of adventure. A quick snack from a pretzel stand seemed safest, and that had almost got him killed.

The mall itself was certainly strange. The Planet Hollywood was the closest Strip casino to his tiny hotel-apartment, and walking through its corridors, Loki became fairly certain it had once been something else entirely. The first few hundred feet of the mall were done up in brushed steel and polished tile, but as soon as he rounded the corner, the older Middle-Eastern motif began to show. The ceiling had been painted up like a desert sky, the floor turned to uneven cobble, and the walls and shop facades looked like old sandstone buildings.

Then, with his mouth half-full of salty pretzel, he came to something he was surprised he hadn't seen yet: a magic shop, stuck in next to a sports bar. It bore the name of Harry Houdini, though Loki doubted the man had anything to do with the shop, whether in person or in whatever remained of his estate and descendants. All the same, his curiosity got the better of him, and he stepped inside, walking past the man on the podium making a card twirl around in the air.

"Hi. Can I show you anything?" the young girl behind the counter asked. The uniform for the shop seemed to be a white shirt with a black waistcoat, though hers were entirely too small on her.

"Just looking," Loki said.

Most of the tricks on the shelves were cheap Tenyo, but there were a few more interesting items in the glass counter, and in the shelf behind it. Some were even proper stage props, priced in the hundreds. They almost seemed like a terribly good deal, until Loki remembered his three-dollar pretzel.

"Actually, yes. Do you know how to add an app to a, um." He pulled out his phone, which he hardly ever used, and looked at the back of it. "A Samsung whatever?"

He handed it out to the girl behind the counter, and she took it nervously. By now, the man at the front had turned to watch them, presumably to kick him out.

"What kind of app?" she asked.

"Something to tell me what these prices mean in krónur," Loki said, pointing at a fishbowl at the top of shelf.

The girl looked up at the fishbowl, and immediately seemed to relax. "Oh! Uh. All right. Let's see."

While she fiddled about with his phone, Loki examined what he could see of the fishbowl and quickly finished off his pretzel. He already had a giant glass fish bowl, but it wasn't in the right country, and he didn't expect it to ever survive being shipped over. Which had been a terrible shame, because it was a routine he would have loved to use in his call-back on Friday. If this was the sort of bowl he'd left behind in Reykjavík, he could fill up a good part of his half-hour with it.

"Do you want to see it?" asked the man with the flying card.

Loki considered it for a moment before nodding. "Yes. Please."

The man put his card away and ducked back to the curtained-off cupboard, returning quickly with a stepladder. By the time he got it down, the girl behind the counter finished with his phone and handed it back, with the currency set to Swedish krona. Loki quickly fixed it and looked up at the price tag on the bowl as it was being brought down.

"Damnit," he hissed to himself at the sight of over 31,000kr on the conversion. It was quite a lot more than he wanted to spend, but now that the fishbowl was down, he was eager to see it up close. Even without water in it, he could tell that the bowl was exactly what he needed. He placed his hand inside and watched it distort and bend the image.

"Any chance I could see it with water?" he asked hopefully.

"We don't have a sink," said the man, cringing apologetically.

Loki chewed on his thumbnail while he considered the purchase. And it would be a huge purchase. And yet, likely still cheaper than trying to fly his out to Las Vegas by Friday.

"What is the likelihood that it will still be here tomorrow?" Loki asked.

"Pretty strong, but we can't hold any items."

Loki clicked his tongue a few times. If he got the bowl, he would also have to get the fish. And the coins. All told, he could wind up spending over 40,000kr on this audition. He had enough money saved up to get by for a few more weeks, but if he spent the money and didn't land the audition, he'd have to go back home.

"It's a lot of money. I need to think about it," Loki said. But he didn't walk away just yet. He knew that walking away was exactly what he should have done, but his first audition hadn't felt very strong. He was surprised to have been called back at all, and now he needed a solid routine that really showed what his show was like.

"Okay," he said quickly. "I have an audition on Friday. That's what I want this for. Would you rent it to me, or else buy it back if I don't get the job and have to go back home?" Loki asked, finally looking up at the sales-magician properly.

The look the man gave him didn't look promising, but Loki didn't consider it a lost cause just yet.

"Where's home?" he asked.

"Iceland," Loki told him. "Reykjavík."

The sales-magician laughed sympathetically. "Oh, man. How you liking this heat?"

Loki rolled his eyes.

Now even the girl was laughing.

"Here's the thing," the sales-magician said. "We don't take returns, and we can't buy items. I'd lose my job if I did. But Denny & Lee, down on Dean Martin will. You'll probably be at a loss, but they'll buy it. Do you know where that is?"

"No, but I'm sure the taxi drivers do," said Loki. He clicked his tongue again while he considered everything. "Okay. I'm going to come back tomorrow morning. If it's still here, I'll take it. You're not on commiseration— no. Something else."

"Commission?" asked the sales-magician, and Loki nodded and snapped his fingers. "No, we're straight hourly. But I'll be here tomorrow anyway."

Loki nodded. "I'll be back."

He reluctantly turned to leave, knowing that if he didn't, he was going to wind up making a very poor financial decision. As he walked away, he could hear the sales-magician muttering to his younger co-worker, and though he couldn't hear what it was, he knew it was about him. Ignoring it, Loki turned in the direction he'd originally been going, curious to see what else was in the mall. Aside from the magic shop, and a few random art galleries, it was like any other mall he'd been in. Random shops selling useless toys or trinkets, and kiosks selling cheap jewellery. One of the shops sold nothing but alpaca-wool socks and sweaters, making Loki wondered what the demand for alpaca-wool was in Las Vegas.

After what he was pretty sure was an actual mile, he came back to the entrance on Las Vegas Boulevard. It was barely noon, and already the heat was starting to get unbearable, but Loki was curious to see Las Vegas in person. He set his eyes on a giant, towering spire that looked to be a few streets away, and decided he'd walk there, and take a taxi back to his hotel-apartment.

By the time he made it to Flamingo Road, he was starting to wonder if he might have been a bit too ambitious. The hotels were all big enough to give him a sickening feeling of vertigo, which was made even more unpleasant by the claustrophobic feeling caused by all the hundreds of people walking down the same sidewalk. And even though he was outdoors, the air felt thick and used, no thanks to the traffic on the road that hardly seemed to go anywhere.

Still, he figured once he got to the big spire building, he could probably sit somewhere cool before getting a cab.

After over an hour, he'd only crossed three proper intersections, and he still wasn't to the towering spire. He'd crossed over the Boulevard at one point, when roadworks had closed the sidewalk on the east side, and never did manage to make it back across. The Strip had been left behind, with most of the buildings along the Boulevard at this point being one- or two-storey little shops, and only the occasional hotel. Across the street from where he stood was a massive, sprawling gift shop, with signs claiming it was the biggest in the world. This far down the road, the traffic had at least picked up, but all that meant was it was loud in an entirely different way.

Loki looked up at the giant spire, which he now realised was even taller than he'd thought when standing outside the Planet Hollywood, and that his estimate of the distance had been severely short. He considered trying to see if the giant gift shop might have any water, but suddenly, he couldn't quite figure out how to move away from the lamp post he'd been leaning against.

"Hey, buddy. You all right?" someone next to him asked.

Loki looked over, finding the man beside him strangely familiar, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Wha?" he asked.

"Are you all right?" the man asked again.

Loki tried to lie and nod, but shook his head instead. "I—No," he said honestly.

The man next to him looked around, and steered him toward the crosswalk that would take him back to the other side of the Boulevard. Loki didn't even have it in him to resist as he was led into the casino across the street and sat down on the first bench they came across. At some point, he had a bottle of water shoved into his hand, and had to be reminded to actually drink it. It was warm, and tasted of plastic, but he drank it anyway.

"Where you staying, pal?" his rescuer asked.

Loki looked up at him, still trying to work out why he looked so familiar.

"You have a neck tattoo," Loki mused aloud. "I bet you punch people all the time."

Mr Neck Tattoo laughed. "Only when they deserve it. You should probably get back to your hotel. Where're you staying?"

"Uhm." Loki thought about it, but he couldn't remember. "I don't know. Some…pisshole behind that one place. What is it? With the guitar?"

The man with the neck tattoo didn't seem like he understood any of that, and for a moment, Loki wondered if he was even speaking the right language. He decided he didn't care, because Mr Neck Tattoo went away after that. And then after that, he came back with someone from the casino's staff. Loki ignored them both and drank his water while they talked back and forth, trying to determine who he was and where they should send him. Something about that seemed terribly funny, and Loki would have laughed at it if he'd had the energy. He didn't, so he just sat and wondered why it seemed so funny.


	6. Chapter 6

Darcy loved summer, and couldn't wait for it to start getting properly hot. Or rather, like most Las Vegans, hated the bitterly cold winters and was glad to see the end of it. Summers in Vegas were matched in intensity only by the winters. Most were mild, with only a snow flurry and some minor flooding here and there, but the ones that weren't mild always crippled the entire valley. Two whole snow plows for the whole of Clark County clearly wasn't cutting it, and yet they still never learned because every few years, fwoom! bigass snow storm would come along and turn the five minute drive home from UNLV into a two-hour adventure.

Of course, when the heat finally came, Darcy was lamenting it along with everyone else. But where she was lamenting it, Don was cursing it, Las Vegas, the Mojave, and the entire Southwest.

Which was exactly what he was doing in Jane's office, with the AC set firmly to subarctic.

"You know, you can get really sick from coming in from the heat to a freezing room," Darcy said as she let herself into the office. She turned the temperature up to a more comfortable 70.

Don lifted his head off the desk at looked at her pleadingly. "I have been in this country for nine years, and still cannot bear this torment," he said. He dropped his head back down onto the desk so hard, the lamp rattled. "How do you stand it?"

Darcy snorted in laughter and took her spot at the computer. "You could have gone to Alaska," she said. "Or Minnesota. Maybe North Dakota."

Don looked back up and gave her the same pained look he always gave when she made that suggestion. The one that said he wished he'd thought of that, but was too stubborn to admit it.

"Jane would never agree to it," he said. He put his head back down on the desk and sighed. "She says the sky is better out here."

Darcy pulled the sticky note with the day's instructions off the monitor and logged into the computer. "What does that mean?" she asked.

Don shrugged. "I have no idea," he said.

They both laughed, neither of them ever able to understand half the things Jane said when she got going. But the feeling went mutually, in all three directions. Don was seriously on his way to becoming a medical genius, and Darcy knew neither of them cared about David Abbott or Al Baker, but that didn't stop her blathering from time to time.

"So, what? You're just gonna stay down here in the sweatbox forever? Get your own place out at the Lakes, behind a twelve-foot wall so you don't keep flashing the neighbours." Darcy asked.

Don pointed vaguely in her direction. "I put up curtains," he said.

Darcy laughed, but she still felt sorry for the big guy. Wherever he was from, it had to be somewhere cold. Not that there were many places on the planet that were more miserable than Las Vegas.

Don sat up properly and shrugged. "I don't know. I've been thinking about changing my focus, so I suppose I have a few more years to consider my options," he said more seriously. It didn't sound like a spur of the moment decision; this was something he'd clearly been thinking about.

"What? Seriously? I thought you were almost done," Darcy said. Why the hell would he want to quit now?

Don nodded, almost mournfully. "I am," he said. And then he shrugged. "But I think I may enjoy surgery more."

He'd certainly like the money more, but Darcy kept that to herself. Then he really could afford to live out at the Lakes.

"Can you do both?" she asked.

Don scrunched up his face in thought. "I don't know," he said. He looked like he thought it was a hell of a good idea, though. "Do you think I should ask?"

Darcy wondered if he would actually go through with it if they let him. It sounded insane. It sounded exactly like the sort of thing he'd do, just because he could. "Who's your advisor?" she asked.

"Harris," said Don. "Useless man is never where he's meant to be."

Darcy knew the pain. Harris had been her advisor until she demanded to be re-assigned. Not that her new one was much better, but at least she returned emails without waiting a week to do it.

"Eep. Start emailing now if you want an answer by graduation," she said.

Don rolled his eyes. He definitely knew the pain and agony that was Harris. It was a wonder the man had a job at all, with how much effort he seemed to put into avoiding doing it.

"So, you're going to be, like, a million dollars in debt the time you finish," Darcy said. She was so not even thinking about all the student debt she'd racked up over her few years in college. Don had been going at his degree for almost the entire time he'd been in the country. He had to have been living off of ramen and white rice to afford it. That and steroids, because he definitely did not have the body of someone who lived on ramen and white rice.

Except he looked weirdly sheepish at Darcy's question. "No, I'm, uh. Onascholarship." He said the last part into the back of his hand as he looked away, but Darcy understood every word of it.

"Oh, I hate you," she said with a dramatic glower. "You asshole. I'm gonna be bankrupt before I even get my first real job, and you're over here with—if it's a full ride, I never want to see you again."

Don cringed and shrugged. "Sorry," he said. He didn't sound like he was sorry at all.

Darcy picked up the stack of sticky pads and threw them at Don. He laughed and tossed them back at her.

"Shall I make it up to you?" He asked, rising to his feet. "Make the perilous trek up to Jason's as recompense?"

"Yes," Darcy said. She didn't like to think she was so easily bought, but Jason's was expensive and delicious, and she was constantly broke. "The mushroom artichoke thing. I want that. And a cherry soda. And a fruit salad with yoghurt."

Don bowed like he was a knight about to embark on a deadly quest. "Then you shall have it."

As he left the office, Darcy called out her thanks and started getting to work.


	7. Chapter 7

Loki stood in the middle of the only room of his so-called apartment, examining the fishbowl on the short dresser while he picked through a carton of cold lo mein. He'd managed to make it last two days, which really only meant he'd spent the last two days pretending he wasn't hungry, and now he was pretending it wasn't cold, since he didn't have a microwave. He knew he should not have bought the fish bowl, but there it was. A 40,000kr investment that represented every poor decision he'd ever made. If he bombed his callback, he'd have just enough money to make it back to Reykjavík, and not a króna more.

He sat down on the itchy sofa and ignored the fact that he hadn't thought any of this through. He needed a miracle at this point. Maybe if he didn't get the job, he could just wander out to the desert and feed the vultures. It would probably be less painful than going back home to face his father.

With a sigh, he looked down at the remains of his dinner. It was mostly carrots and cabbage at this point. Loki hated cabbage. He didn't trust it. It remained far too green, even after being cooked to rubber. He quickly ate it anyway, trying to get it down without tasting it in the name of not wasting the money. Dropping the Styrofoam container to the ground by the window, Loki leaned over and tried to lie down on the sofa. It wasn't very easy though, being it was only about four feet long and lacked arm rests, and he was six feet and change. The sofa pulled out in a mockery of sofa beds, making it a completely useless oversized Ottoman at its full size, but Loki hadn't even bothered.

Maybe bombing the audition would almost be worth it. Then he'd at least have an excuse to go back home and sleep in a real bed. With an annoyed huff, he threw the pillow he had to purchase from the drugstore out from under him and rolled onto the floor after it. The neighbours below probably weren't too happy with the ceiling sounding like it was going to collapse on them, but knowing he'd probably made them that much more miserable almost lightened his mood. Reaching up the wall with one long arm, he managed to flip off the light and plunge the room into partial darkness; the bright lamp right above his window outside made sure it was never actually dark enough to get any real sleep, and it was in cahoots with the constant stream of police sirens that blared down the street after 10pm.

Loki wasn't sure when he managed to finally fall asleep, but he woke bright and early to an obnoxious, piercing sound coming from his phone. Grumbling angrily at it, he pulled himself up off the floor and fished about the sofa for his phone. Finally finding it, he jabbed the home button to turn off the alarm and slunk off to the absurdly big closet to find his suit. An hour later, he was showered and dressed, with his hair pulled back into a neat tail and his pockets stuffed full of coins, cards, and silk scarves. He once again loaded his footlocker into the back of the taxi, this time also bringing a second smaller one into the back seat with him. With the drive to the casino being so short, he didn't think there would be too great a danger of spilling fish water everywhere, but just in case, he didn't want the poor creatures in the boot. If they died before he got to the casino, he'd really be screwed.

He directed the taxi to the entrance near the theatre, and even managed to get help bringing his gear inside. There were only three other hopefuls there, once again all dressed in their street clothes and ugly trainers. Loki studied the competition as he set up in the green room, recognising one of the young men from before. This time, he had a new assistant, rather than the girl he'd been hastily teaching the routine to. She seemed disinterested in the audition, poking at her phone like she was waiting for a dental appointment.

He poured several jugs of water into the fishbowl, made sure none of his fish had died during the trip, and waited to be called.

As it happened, the bowl wasn't exactly like the one he already had; a fault he hadn't discovered until after he'd purchased it and got it back to his apartment. It was close enough that most of his routine could go unchanged, but different enough that a good chunk of it had to go, which severely affected his patter. At the point where he ordinarily turned coins into fish, he found himself stalling, momentarily forgetting the changes to the routine.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't fit an assistant into my luggage, and it's making me confused," he said to the judging panel — the same four people as last time.

A few of them chuckled as he regained his rhythm. He tipped the bowl over the second tank he'd brought out, pouring the water and fish out. The fish swam around the new tank in a disorientated, orange spiral while the coins stayed in the bowl, hidden only by the distortion of the glass and the way Loki held his hand to support the bowl's weight. The panel audibly gasped at the effect, but Loki held back his reaction to it. He tipped the bowl just enough to make it seem as if there was nothing left to tip out, moving slowly to keep the coins from scraping against the sides too loudly. He could hear the clink of metal against glass, and just hoped that it wasn't loud enough to be heard in the audience. After carefully putting the bowl back onto its stand, Loki bowed to his audience.

"Thank you," he said.

"Thank you," Fischer said. "Uh, before you go, quick question. Who was it I spoke to on the phone? Was that your manager? The English guy."

Loki smiled as. "No, that was me," he said, switching accents effortlessly and going back to his more comfortable English voice. "I've spent so much time pretending to be English that I find I have to force myself to sound like an Icelander."

Fischer and his colleagues all laughed again. "All right," said Fischer. "Thank you, again. We'll call you to let you know."

Loki nodded and gathered up his smaller props, while the security guard came out to help move the fish tank off. Loki knew what 'we'll call you' meant. It meant they were going with someone else, and that he was broke, and stuck in a foreign country with terrible weather. Resigning himself to a future of ridicule and disapproval, Loki started packing up his gear, making sure nothing spilled on the floor.

"Do you want some fish?" he asked the security guard.

The security guard laughed. "No, sorry. Take them to the pet shop?"

Loki looked down at all the goldfish swimming dejectedly in the tank. "They don't take returns," he said.

There was a storm channel that ran under the car park outside his apartment. Maybe he could hop the fence and pour the fish in there. Right before he took a cab down to the recommended magic shop and attempted to sell the fish bowl at a loss, and then used the money to buy a plane ticket the hell out of Las Vegas.

"Want help getting this out to your car?" the security guard asked.

Loki looked at the two footlockers and all the stuff he still had to cram into them. "I have to call the cab, and it's all fragile," he said.

The security guard nodded. "All right. Good luck. Hope you get the job."

Loki nodded back. "Thanks," he said, already fairly certain it was going to go to the boy with the boxless box jumper routine. Hopefully, the boy would manage to find some proper trousers when he actually went on stage before an audience. He hated magicians that made the rest of them look ridiculous. It was a ridiculous career choice to begin with, and Loki knew it, and the ones who went out of their way to prove to the world they were all a bunch of massive dorks weren't making it any easier.

With everything carefully put away, Loki phoned for a taxi and sat down to wait. The helpful woman on the phone told him that it could be about a twenty minute wait, so he took one of the chairs and propped up the door to the car park, so he would wait inside but still see anyone pulling up for him.

Forty-five minutes later, he phoned the company again.

"I'm sorry, sir. It may be another twenty minutes before we can get someone out to you."

Loki glowered at the wall in front of him. "Is there nothing you can do?" he asked, not really sure how to bribe someone over the phone.

"I'm sorry sir. We're very busy," the not-so-helpful woman said.

"Fine." Loki jammed his thumb against the screen, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as slamming a phone down, or even snapping an old flip-phone shut. He stared out at the dusty car park, watching sickly-looking palm trees sway in the hot breeze. A small team of people were working on the landscaping, planting small little gardens around the lamp posts in the car park, while someone else was spraying down the tarmac in the far corner before finishing painting the lines. Loki was fairly certain that one of the landscapers was actually painting the grass green, which had to be just about the worst thing he'd ever witnessed.

Loki watched them work, wondering what past-life sins they were atoning for to have wound up working in the hot sun all day. Perhaps the same sins he was atoning for by getting stranded in some godforsaken sandbox. Loki checked his phone again, wondering if he should try to find another cab company. Surely in a city as big as Las Vegas, there were bound to be a great many unreliable cab companies to choose from. As he tapped at the screen and tried to make sense of the browser, he heard footsteps and voices coming his way.

"Green room lights are still on," Fischer said, presumably to his colleagues.

Loki rolled his eyes, prepared to get kicked out. Sure enough, Fischer walked into the green room and stopped in his steps when he saw Loki slouched in one of the chairs.

"Oh," Fischer said, obviously startled. "You, uh..."

Loki shook his head and shrugged. "Do you know any taxi services besides Henderson? I think I've pissed them off already," Loki said.

Fischer shrugged and seemed to think on that. "You could try Desert. I've never used them, though."

Loki nodded and started punching the name of the new company into his phone. "I suppose you probably want me to wait outside so you can lock up," he said. He started to get up, not looking forward to stinking up his his foot locker with baking goldfish. He looked at them in their little tank, not sure if they were already starting to look a bit deathy, or if he was imagining it.

Fischer's eyes were on the tank as well. He gave it a quizzical look and shook his head.

"You know, why don't you come back with me, instead. Save us the phone call." Fischer nodded back toward the door to the corridor.

Not entirely sure what to expect, Loki pulled the chair out from the door to the car park and followed after Fischer. Construction progress was going quickly, with new carpets laid in the corridor; a garish green and blue Art Deco palm frond pattern. Loki hated it. The wallpapering was similarly pseudo-tropical in design, though fortunately in far more subdued colours. Loki still hated it.

"So you came out here all the way from Iceland?" Fischer asked.

"I did," said Loki, not bothering to put on any accent for Fischer. He wondered where this conversation was going, and if he was going to yet again be asked his opinion of the weather.

"I found some of your videos on YouTube. The fish act seemed different online. Longer, I think," said Fischer. He led Loki into an office that had thrown out all tropical aesthetics, making it feel several hundred times more comfortable.

Loki sat down in the seat offered to him in front of a large black desk, looking round at all the pictures of what he assumed were local landmarks and celebrities.

"I didn't have the right props for it today," Loki said, smiling wanly. "I expected it to be much worse than it was."

Fischer chuckled and flipped through the leather planner on his desk. "Yeah, but you're funny about it. You could have cussed it out when it didn't work."

"Would you prefer if I'd done that?" Loki asked. He didn't mention that he hadn't sworn at his props primarily because he'd got it all out of his system the night before.

"God, no. I hated that little fucker, and couldn't get him out of here quick enough," Fischer said. He found what he was looking for and grabbed a pen from the cup by his computer. "Well. We're looking at a July fourth opening. That's about six weeks from now. Think you can get what you need over here by then?"

Loki couldn't entirely believe what he'd heard. He was half expecting to have to get on his knees and blow someone to be able to get any work, and was completely prepared to try it with Fischer.

"Uh." He blinked and shook his head a bit, still trying to recover from the shock. "I may have to sell a kidney to afford it. I barely have enough to stay where I'm at for much longer." It pained him having to admit it and risk losing the job, but he knew he couldn't afford to keep his apartment and fly everything over from Reykjavík. He shrugged, trying not to seem as hopeless and desperate as he knew he was.

Fischer, on the other hand, barely seemed fazed by it. "Where are you staying?" He asked.

Loki pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "Just around the corner. At, what is it? Harbour Island, or something."

Fischer actually flinched. "Oh god. Why?" he asked.

Loki shrugged again. "They're cheap. Ish. And they'd rent to me even with foreign ID," he said.

"No, you have to get out of there before you get a disease," said Fischer, making Loki wonder what he hadn't been told about the place.

Fischer flipped back through his planner again and nodded to himself.

"Well. Why don't you come back tomorrow around ten? Sign all the paperwork and go through everything you need from us." said Fischer. "I'll send someone by to pick you up so you don't have to deal with the cabs."

"All right," Loki said agreeably. He was almost afraid to point out that he still couldn't afford to move his props over from Iceland, in case Fischer decided to go with someone else at the last minute.

"And pack your bags and get ready to check out," Fischer said. He wrote a note on an oversized sticky note and slid it into his pocket. "Our hotel is finished. It's not inspected, but it's still safer than where you're at now. We'll put you in one of the suites until you find somewhere better."

Loki nodded, wondering where the punchline came in.

"That sounds good. Thank you," he said.

He stood and shook Fischer's hand over the desk.

"And go ahead and leave your things here," Fischer said as Loki started to walk out of the office. "It'll be locked up, and we'll get your fish fed for you."

Loki nodded. "Thank you. Again," he said.

Fisher nodded back. "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

Loki left the office and eventually found his way back outside. There was still no sign of a cab anywhere in sight, but Loki decided he was feeling good enough to walk back, even despite the heat.


	8. Chapter 8

Darcy sat in the windowless room, completely unable to concentrate on her essay. She had ninety minutes to write three pages, and she'd barely got two sentences out. She just didn't care about the reasons for having a pre-scripted approach to television interviews, and how to avoid being led away from the prepared topic. The entire term had been nothing but idiot politicians saying stupid things on television, and she just didn't have it in her to care. She probably shouldn't have even written her smart-ass response, but now that she'd already put down, 'you look like an idiot either way, so clearly the best solution is to avoid all television interviews over the course of your political career,' she couldn't think of a single other thing to say.

In the end, she managed two whole paragraphs. She was going to fail, and she knew it, and… And well, she did care. She cared a lot, because she was already on the verge of academic probation, on top of struggling to make it through the term without just quitting all together. But she didn't know why she cared. Aside from the crippling debt she'd accrued for no reason, to pursue a degree she wasn't even sure she wanted. She cared about the waste of time and money if she failed.

She trudged to Jane's office, not even caring about rushing to get there on time. She'd just bombed her final and was probably going to lose all her loans and grants anyway, so it wasn't like she'd be able to keep her job after the term was over.

Jane was in, working on grading the final exams for her own classes. She had the same dead-eyed, vacant stare as everyone else on campus, and was probably going to go insane from reading the same thing over and over again.

"Hey," Jane said without looking up.

Darcy slouched down in front of the computer and signed in. "Hey," she said flatly.

Now, Jane did look up. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Darcy shrugged. "No, not really. I'm pretty sure I just failed my politics in media course. Later on, I need to check if I failed algebra too."

Jane gaped, but recovered quickly. "I'm sure you did better than you think. It's just stress," she said.

Darcy picked up the grade sheet next to the keyboard and started poking the scores into the system. "We had to write a three page essay. I wrote two paragraphs of BS and gave up," she said.

Jane's eyebrows rose dramatically, like they were trying to escape into her hair. "That's... pretty bad," she admitted.

"My mom's gonna kill me," Darcy said. She poked a few more grades in and shrugged.

"Don was saying you were talking about maybe dropping out," Jane said, making it sound more like a question.

"Yeah. I might not have to now, though." Darcy wrinkled her nose at the thought of getting kicked out of college. She'd never find a job now. She was going to be unemployed forever, with student loan debt collectors on her ass until the day she died.

"Well, I'm sorry, but that's just not an option," Jane said with a sudden air of authority. Darcy looked up at her, not really sure what Jane meant. "If you drop out, then I lose my assistant. And I absolutely need my assistant."

Darcy snorted. "If you tried to do everything, you'd explode," she said.

"It's true," Jane agreed. "Which is why I need my assistant."

Darcy smiled despite herself. "I mean. I don't even know what I want to do. The farther into my degree I get, the less I care about what I'm doing. I think I just wanted a grown-up job that I know will pay the bills, because I'll never be able to do what I want to do." She shrugged again and went back to entering grades into the computer.

"Well, you went to that audition," said Jane hopefully. "I'm… I'm sure there must be tons of those around here."

"Only as a stand-in for someone else. And he didn't even get the job. I don't know who it went to," said Darcy. Even if Steven had got the job, it wouldn't have really helped Darcy anyway. The whole thing had been a waste of time and hope.

"That's what you should do this summer," said Jane, thumping her hand against the table. "Find every audition in every casino in town, and go to all of them. If you're actually going to quit school, it should be because you're doing what you want to do. Not because you don't know what you should be doing."

It wasn't what Darcy had expected to hear. "Really?" she asked. She stared up at Jane, wondering if she'd hallucinated it, or if she was just being pranked. "You're not gonna tell me that it's a boy's hobby, or that it's not stable enough to do for real?"

"Nope," said Jane.

Darcy smiled a little more genuinely. Outside of the Denny & Lee group, every single person in Darcy's life seemed to think her hobby was stupid, and that the only way she'd ever make it would be to dress up in sequins and feathers and be used as a breathing prop.

"Thanks," she said. "I'll think about it. Maybe I need to just take a leaf out of Don's book and change my major or something."

Jane rolled her eyes. Apparently she'd heard about that, too. "You've got all summer to figure it out. I'm sure you'll work something out."

Darcy shrugged, and the two of them went back to their work, Jane grading term papers and Darcy entering term grades into the system. Going through the grades made her feel a little better about her own situation. At least she wasn't like the person who apparently never even showed up for the final in Jane's statistical physics course.

"Is this for a masters?" Darcy asked, holding up the grade sheet. "Seven thirty-one?"

Jane glanced up. "That's doctorate level," she said.

"Oh my god. And you have two of these?" Darcy asked. She didn't even know course numbers got as high as the 700s until she took the job as Jane's TA.

Jane inhaled through her teeth. "It wasn't easy," she admitted.

"Yeah, I bet not. Holy cow." The guy who got a big old zero was probably wishing he was dead. Darcy knew she would have been. At least she wasn't in his place. Maybe it was just good old schadenfreude, but her mood lightened after that. She put the rest of the grades into the system, laughing every time Jane growled in frustration. She must have been grading papers for one of her 120 classes, because she only ever made those sounds when the answers given were first-year stupid.

When she finished with the grades, and double- and triple-checked them to make sure she'd entered everything in correctly, Darcy pulled her phone from her bag and turned it on. She'd forgotten all about it after she'd left class, but it wasn't like anyone ever called her for anything.

They did, however, text her. Apparently. She opened the text and read it, finding the information it contained unbelievably tempting.

"So, what you were saying earlier," Darcy said slowly. She bit her lip and shifted in her seat as she read the text again. "Apparently, the guy who got the job — the one my friend Steven auditioned for. He's having auditions of his own. For an assistant."

Jane looked up, wide-eyed and surprisingly hopeful. "Are you going?" she asked.

"Do you really think I should?" asked Darcy.

"Yes," said Jane. "Unless you don't want to. But I know you do."

Darcy tried not to grin. "Yeah, kinda. But it sounds like it's a showgirl audition, which… yuck." She wrinkled her nose and read the text again, definitely getting a showgirl audition vibe from it.

"Would it really be so bad?" asked Jane.

Yes. Yes it would. Standing up on stage in a sequinned bikini every night, getting shoved into a box and turned into a dove.

"I don't know. I mean. Georgie was a showgirl when she started, and now she's eating fire and wearing real clothes when she goes up there," Darcy reasoned.

"Well see," said Jane. "There you go. It's your foot in the door. The crappy fast food job you take before you apply for all the good jobs."

"Yeah, maybe," Darcy agreed. "Maybe I can get him to teach me how to eat fire and then quit with all his trade secrets."

Jane thumped her hand against the desk again. "Exactly. But don't get sued if you steal his stuff. That's the opposite of what you want."

Darcy laughed again. "Yeah, that would suck." She sent off a quick reply, thanking Steven for the heads up on the audition, and slipped her phone back into her handbag. Now she had a whole new problem. She had absolutely no idea what to wear.


	9. Chapter 9

Loki had hoped to find Thor sooner, but like all of his plans, this too had been overly-ambitious. Loki barely had the time to breathe since landing in America. Even if he had managed to find more than a few hours a day to himself, when he wasn't struggling to find work, or telling builders how he needed the stage, or arguing over the phone with his landlord back in Reykjavík, he had no idea where to actually start looking for Thor. When he landed in Las Vegas, he expected to find a row of casinos and a few side streets, with Hualapai being one of them. Thinking back on it, it was a stupid assumption to have made. He knew Thor was a year away from finishing a medical degree at the university, and universities didn't tend to exist in the middle of nowhere. Universities attracted people, and those people needed a place to live. What Loki definitely had not expected, and still couldn't quite get his head around, was a city that seemed to go on forever.

Even with the address pinned on Google Maps, Loki still didn't have time to go spy in the hedges. Which was something else he hadn't expected Las Vegas to have. But even if he had the time to explore the desert flora up close and personally, he hadn't exactly planned out his actions any further than that.

It was all a moot point, really. If Loki wanted to be able to stay in the country to track down his brother, he had to keep working. And as long as he was working, he didn't have the time to do anything else. He checked his watch as he dressed in the small hotel suite (which at least had a proper bed with proper pillows, making it infinitely better than the rathole he'd been rescued from) and almost jumped at the time. Loki swore and buttoned up his shirt. He barely stepped into his shoes before grabbing a notebook from the dresser and rushing out the door. His hair was still damp and snarled, hanging loose over his shoulders and making his shirt wet, but he'd slept later than he'd meant to and didn't have the time to brush everything out.

His suite was on the same side of the casino as the theatre, in the part of the building that had been mostly finished, needing only the interior decorator to come along and put more palm trees in pots and paintings of palm trees everywhere. Loki wound through the back halls to the green room where people were already waiting, and cut through it to get backstage. The theatre wasn't even close to ready for a performance yet, but at least the prop room was more than big enough to accommodate what he'd managed to have sent over so far, and still have room to spare.

Loki found a table in the wings and brought it out to the stage as one of the security guards wandered in from the green room.

"We've got about six people out here waiting to be let in," he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.

Loki looked down at the table, and then back toward the prop room. "Five minutes, and then bring them in here," he said, waving his hand toward the house. He didn't wait for a response before rushing back to the prop room to gather up anything that could be easily carried. Most of what he brought out were simple props which he hadn't even used in a routine in years, but any beginner should have been able to work most of them.

Finally, he found a chair and a small magic table and sat both on the stage a few feet from the prop table, just as the security guard led in a small group of women. They were all wearing tiny skirts and shirts that were too small, which somehow Loki doubted was because of the heat. He checked his watch, debating whether he should start early and just let people in as they came, but he decided he'd stall for just a few minutes longer.

"Can you find me some eggs?" he asked the security guard suddenly. "About a half dozen. And a rubber band." He pulled his hair off his shoulders and frowned at the mess left on his shoulders.

"Oh, here," said one of the women from the house. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a big, weirdly fluffy hair tie and tossed it up at him. Loki caught it out of the air and frowned at it.

"So, just the eggs then?" asked the security guard, obviously trying not to laugh.

Loki shrugged to himself and used the ridiculous item to pull his hair off of his neck and shoulders.

"Yes. Just the eggs," Loki said. He fiddled with the props on the table, spreading them out evenly, despite knowing that by the end of the day, it would all be a big, jumbled mess.

Two more young women wandered out from the green room, wearing short shorts and crop tops. Loki watched them sit down next to one another, having doubts about this entire audition. Looking over everyone, he was fairly certain they had all shown up to audition as showgirls, ready to be stuffed into boxes and turned into tigers.

"How many girls are you looking for?" one of the women in the house asked.

Loki looked up properly. "Just one. And she has to be very good."

"I'm incredibly good," the woman said. Loki rolled his eyes and went back to pretending to check over all of the props.

A few more women wandered in, along with the security guard. He brought the carton of eggs over and set it down on the table where Loki pointed.

"Need anything else?" he asked.

Loki looked around, first at the table of props, and then at the growing group of hopefuls in the house. "No, this should be all. I'll call if something arises."

The security guard nodded and waved out to the house. "Good luck, ladies," he said before disappearing again.

Deciding that if anyone else showed up, they could just sit down with the rest, Loki took his seat on the stage and looked out at the group of hopefuls.

"Who's first?" he asked.

There was a brief moment of hesitation before someone finally stood up and climbed the steps back up to the stage. She stood a few feet away, looking like she wasn't sure if she should start dancing or not.

"What's your name?" Loki asked.

"Candy," she said.

Loki raised an eyebrow as he wrote that down, not believing for a minute that it was her real name. "Do you have a telephone number, Candy?" he asked.

She gave it to him slowly, giving him plenty of time to write it down.

"All right," said Loki, dropping the notebook to his lap and folding his hands over it. "Show me a magic trick."

Candy gave him a confused look, and then turned the confused look to the table full of props. She quickly zeroed in on the set of polished aluminium cups and picked one up, along with one of the red cork balls beside it. She put the ball onto the magic table and put the cup over it, and then lifted the cup again quickly, glaring at the ball as if she had expected it to vanish on its own accord. She tried again, and again, but still the ball remained right where she'd put it.

"I don't get it," she said.

Loki smiled at her. "Thank you. Next," he said, scratching her name off the page.

Candy looked at him indignantly. "That's it?" she asked.

"Yes," said Loki, nodding. "You can go home now."

Candy scoffed and stomped off the stage while others in the house all murmured amongst one another. Two of the women got up and followed Candy out, while a third hesitantly made her way up to the stage.

"Name," Loki said.

"Denise," the young woman said, lacking confidence.

"And your telephone number?" Loki asked.

She gave hers and then looked over to the table. "You want me to…?" she asked.

Loki nodded, and watched as she picked through the props. For some reason unknown to man or science, she pulled out an egg and tried to juggle it from hand to hand, only to drop it on her feet, splattering raw egg everywhere. Loki covered his face with his hand, taking a good, long moment before looking back up again. There was still egg everywhere, so he got up and walked back to the wings to find some shop towels.

"Thank you very much," he said insincerely as he tossed a shop towel at her. "Go. Leave. Now." He waved her away and bent to clean up the mess before it ruined the stage and stank up the entire theatre.

Denise stomped off much the same way Candy had, passing another small group of women as they wandered in.

"Don't even bother," she told them as she went.

Throwing the towel back to the wings for one of the builders to take care of later, Loki decided that Denise rather had the right idea.

"If you're only here to shake your arse, just get out. You're wasting my time," he said as he sat back down. He scribbled over Denise's name as most of the women in the house got up and angrily left, leaving only three behind.

"Do you know any magic at all?" Loki asked those who remained.

The telling silence was enough to make Loki want to get up and walk out. He started to stand when someone finally said, "I do."

Loki sat back in his seat and waved her up to the stage. He looked out at the two remaining women still in the house.

"What about you?" he asked.

After an awkward moment, they both got up and left as well. Loki did his very best to ignore it, and focused instead on the young woman before him. She looked strangely familiar, and it took Loki a few moments to realise why.

"You were at the first audition," he said.

"Yep," she said awkwardly.

"I was watching you. That was impressive," he said honestly.

The young woman shrugged. "It's his trick. I'd only just learned it that day."

"That's what was impressive," Loki told her. He picked his notebook back up and tapped the pen against it. "What's your name?"

"Darcy," she answered.

Loki started to write it down, but gave up halfway through. "Impress me," he said.

Darcy looked over at the prop table, taking her time in deciding which one to pick. She grabbed the two remaining cups and dropped one into the other, letting it seem like it had passed clean through and fallen onto the table. It was a simple light trick that any child could do, and yet still the only thing he'd seen so far that had shown even the slightest amount of skill. Darcy put the cups down again, and went for the embroidered silk egg bag with a thoughtful look on her face.

"Should I fetch another towel?" Loki asked.

Darcy gave him a withering look as she folded the bag into quarters. "Rude," she said. She plucked out another egg from the carton and tossed it into the air, catching it effortlessly in the folded bag. She shook the bag out, showing it empty, and then twisted it up and smacked it against her hand. Proving the bag well and truly empty, she stretched it out again, and held it by the corners and giving it one more shake. Tossing the bag aside, she picked up one of the cups and put it down on the table, lifting it again to show the egg unharmed underneath.

"You flashed the egg on the load," Loki told her plainly.

"Did I? Fuck," Darcy said.

"No," Loki said. "I just wanted to see how you'd react."

"Rude," Darcy repeated. She looked like she wanted to throw something at him. Which is probably what Loki would have done in the same situation, so he couldn't exactly fault her for it.

"Show me some cards," he said, pointing to the deck of greenbacks on the table.

"Why green?" she asked, cutting the deck and flipping half of it around and running her fingers across the sides to check for a shave.

"Because it's visible on stage, but not red," Loki said. "And anything else just looks gaffed."

Darcy laughed and fanned out the deck with one hand. "I know a guy who uses a Ghost, and then gets annoyed when people accuse him of using a gaff." She offered him the fan.

Loki shook his head. "They're pretty, but not for performances," he agreed. He picked out a card from the middle of the fan and looked at it. Darcy cut the deck and held it out. Holding his card between two fingers, Loki set it obediently on the top of the cut.

Darcy shuffled the deck and snapped her fingers against the top card. She picked it up, showing it as Loki's chosen card. Again, she slid it back into the deck and shuffled, this time making the card spring straight up into the air. She caught it, showed him, and shuffled it again, once again pulling his card off the top.

"Yes, good. You're hired," Loki decided aloud.

"Seriously?" asked Darcy, jumping in place. "Just like that?"

Loki looked out at the empty house, raising an eyebrow to the distinct lack of competition. "Do you know metamorphosis?" he asked.

"I've never had the chance to try," Darcy said. She put the cards back on the table and stepped away.

"Mentalism?" asked Loki.

"Yes, but I won't do anything that involves talking to ghosts," Darcy said bluntly. "It's mean."

Loki shrugged. He didn't talk to ghosts anyway, so there was no problem there. He stood and pulled out his phone, looking for the number he'd stored away the day before.

"Come back at four. Bring your best shoes," he said. He found the number and waved Darcy out so he could make a few calls and clean up the stage.


	10. Chapter 10

Darcy held her phone to her ear with her shoulder as she dug around the space by her bed. She still wasn't sure she hadn't dreamt the whole thing up, and when Jane finally answered, she still wasn't sure exactly what she was going to say.

"Hey. Jane," she started before getting distracted by half a dozen unmatched shoes she hadn't even remembered ever buying.

"Darcy?" asked Jane, sounding surprised to be hearing from her. "What are you doing?"

Darcy found a match to the black pump in her left hand, but she wasn't sure if those were her best shoes, so she kept looking.

"I'm trying to find some shoes," she said, quietly hating that her closet was just big enough to be a way-too-small bedroom. "Because I won't be coming in today. Or at all. Ever. Sorry."

"Oh," said Jane. "Are you all right? What's going on?"

"Yep," said Darcy with as much breath as she could manage with the edge of her bed pressing into her stomach. She tried to wiggle under the bed, but there wasn't enough room between it and the wall to even get down onto the ground properly. She gave up and sat up straight, surprised at how easily she was suddenly able to breathe.

"So, that thing you told me to do," said Darcy. She looked down at the pumps in her hand and decided they wouldn't work at all. "I went this morning. To the audition, you know? And kinda. Got the job."

"Oh my god!" shouted Jane so loudly that Darcy had to pull the phone away from her ear.

"Yeah, I know right?" Darcy said.

"That's amazing. It sucks for my grade books, but wow," Jane said.

Darcy laughed. Jane must have been in her office, because Darcy could hear the shuffling of papers underneath everything.

"I mean, it was crazy. He kicked everyone out-"

"What?" asked Jane incredulously.

"I know!" Darcy said, still not able to believe it. "Like, I thought it was going to be another showgirl audition, along with frickin everybody else there, so I showed up in this skirt that hasn't actually fit me since the eighth grade. Along with frickin everybody else there. So then he got pissed off and told everyone to just get the fuck out unless they could do magic. And fucking everyone left. I was the only one still there!"

"No," said Jane.

Darcy threw her arms I to the air, forgetting about her shoes and hitting them against the wall. "I know! He told me to come back at four, so now I'm looking for shoes."

"Why are you looking for shoes? What's wrong with whatever you wore today?" Jane asked.

Darcy shook her head and tossed the pumps toward her pillow. "He told me to bring my best pair," she said.

"Oh, the black mules. Definitely," said Jane with authority.

"Those are exactly the ones I'm looking for," Darcy said. She looked over the bed at the mess against the wall and sighed. "So, I'm gonna go back to that. Sorry for bailing on you forever."

"You can make it up by getting me and Don tickets to your show," Jane said.

"Done," agreed Darcy. "Kay, gonna go. See you... Sometime."

Jane laughed. "Okay. Congrats. Maybe you'll start to feel better."

"Yeah, maybe. Good luck finding someone else willing to tackle your mess. Bye." Darcy hung up while Jane protested her mess being called a mess. And it was a mess. A terrible, awful mess that consumed the entire office. But it was a mess that had given Darcy a little extra money for groceries, so she couldn't hate on it too much.

Tossing her phone aside, Darcy leaned back over the side of her bed and started looking through the mess of shoes and dropped shirts and that bra she thought she'd lost six months before. With the top of her head resting against the floor, she managed to reach under the bed and fish around, finally coming up with the shoes she'd been hoping to find. Looking at them, she was almost tempted to bring her running shoes as well. Just in case her new boss' idea of 'best shoes' was slightly more utilitarian than a pair of shoes whose sole purpose was to look sexy as hell.

Actually, she had no idea what the hell he had planned, and Darcy had less than twenty minutes to work it out. Worse, she didn't even have a number she could have phoned to find out.

Looking down at the shoes in her hands one more time, she decided to assume she was supposed to dress a bit fancy. She found a better skirt - one that went down to her knees and didn't show off everything at the slightest movement - and a top that her boobs didn't constantly try to escape from, and changed quickly. She had just enough time after to check her hair and makeup before rushing back out of her apartment. The Key Largo was only a few blocks away, straight down Flamingo, but she wanted to be a few minutes early. But at the rate she was going, she'd barely be on time.

At least it was far enough off the strip that the constant traffic backup didn't manage to slow her down. She parked close to the green room door, knowing where it was this time, finding it propped open with a chair. Darcy wasn't sure if she was supposed to actually go in, so she poked her head into the building to scope it out first. Loki was sitting on the long sofa against the wall, talking with a man in a suit. They both seemed to notice her at the same time and waved her in.

"Yes, come in. Come in. Shut the door," Loki said.

Darcy stepped through the door and moved the chair out of the way so it could close. There was a hint of air conditioning about the room, but with the door having been propped open, it was only a very small hint.

Suddenly, Loki stopped talking about wanting to repaint the walls and zeroed his attention straight to Darcy's feet.

"What are those?" he asked.

"What?" asked Darcy, looking down quickly. She wasn't sure what she expected to see, but everything looked fine.

"Your shoes. Can you run in those?" Loki asked.

Darcy laughed. "No," she said.

Loki shook his head, looking extremely unimpressed. "Get rid of them," he said flatly.

"What?" Darcy asked again. She wasn't sure she heard him right. Maybe it was just his accent getting in the way.

"They're not going to work. You don't have to throw them away, but you can't wear those unless you learn to run in them."

Darcy seriously regretted not bringing her trainers. "Uhhh. Okay? Should I go back home and get something else?"

Loki looked like he was about to say yes, but then quickly shook his head and waved the issue off. "Do you have contact lenses?" he asked instead.

Because apparently, even though he wasn't looking for showgirls, he still had requirements for her appearance. Darcy was beginning to feel put on the spot, especially with someone else watching her get told how to look.

"Nope," she said, trying not to sound completely defiant.

"I would prefer them," Loki said.

Darcy was starting to wonder if she was being pranked, and then she realised that she should have expected this sort of thing to begin with. Just because this Loki guy didn't want showgirls didn't mean he was exempt from being a massive creep.

"Anything else?" she asked, letting her irritation get the better of her.

Loki narrowed his eyes, almost like he was actually studying her for something to complain about now. "You can't wear that nail varnish either. Not on stage," he said.

Darcy shot a look down at her hands, wondering what was so bad about burgundy nail polish. "Seriously?" she asked.

"Yes," said Loki simply.

Darcy wondered if it was too late to just turn around and walk out. She wondered how much she'd regret it if she did. Before she was able to decide if she was going to turn around and throw out the best opportunity of her life, the door out to the hallway opened, and a woman dragged the biggest Tupperware container Darcy had ever seen into the room.

"Who was that man at the door? He almost didn't let me in" she asked, not even trying to hide her irritation. She let the giant-ass container fall to the ground with a loud thud and sighed deeply.

"Ramon is way too into his job. Sorry about him," said the man in the suit.

Loki looked up at him, like he'd just remembered the man was there. "Oh, yes. Darcy. This is Jeff. He owns this casino. When you're done here, you'll go sign all your papers with him. Ordinarily, you'd sign with me, but," he cringed way too dramatically to be genuine, "there's a problem with my visa. We're getting it sorted, but it means your contract is going to be with the casino. Not with me. At least for now."

"Okay," Darcy said slowly. She wasn't sure if that made her feel better or not. Worse, she still had no idea what she was even supposed to be doing there, other than get torn apart for just about everything.

Jeff stood and nodded down to Loki. "I'll leave you guys and ladies to it, then." He left the room, leaving behind an awkward silence. Was Darcy supposed to do some kind of little song and dance? What the hell did Loki want from her?

Luckily, the grumpy woman with the Tupperware seemed to know what she was doing. She pulled off the lid to it and looked up at Loki and Darcy. "Who's going first?" she asked.

Loki gestured to Darcy. "I was just refitted about four months ago. She needs a brand new everything. Fifteen, plus the main."

Darcy looked between them, Loki lounging lazily on the sofa, and the woman already digging through the Tupperware.

The woman laughed and shook her head. "Nathan only wanted three. Trying to show him up, are you?"

"Nathan?" asked Loki.

Suddenly, Darcy realised why she was there, and why she'd been told to wear her best shoes.

"Nathan Burton," she said, assuming the other woman was Georgia Daniels. Most of the big acts in town had in-house costuming, but the small up-and-comers needed to get professional costumes made too. And Georgia was the woman you went to.

"I thought it was Lance Burton," Loki said.

"Yeah, there's him too, but his show's a total snoozefest. If Tomsoni's opening for him, that's the only reason to go. Otherwise its two hours of box jumping and a duck," Darcy said.

"No, that's not all he does," Georgia corrected as she pulled swathes of bright fabric from her Tupperware bucket. "He has the doves and the paid heckler, too."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "We can't forget his heckler," she agreed. Sick of standing up like she was on display, Darcy sat down in one of the folding chairs that littered the room.

"What other acts are there?" Loki asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Have you seen any of them yet?" Darcy asked.

Loki shook his head.

"Oh. Well, there's Hammer. He's all right. Nathan Burton. Nothing to really rave about, but they're both good for an evening show. And Believe, which is just another Cirque show. The best evening show, now that Johnathan's called it quits is Penn and Teller. You also have to see Mac King. He's afternoon, but he really could be evening. I'm not actually sure why he's not. Too short, maybe? I don't know."

"Oh, it's too bad about Johnathan," Georgia said sadly.

"I know," Darcy agreed. "I wish I'd seen him a few more times."

"What happened?" asked Loki, looking back and forth from Darcy and Georgia. "Something go wrong on stage?"

Darcy frowned. "No, he's dying. Actually, when his trick went wrong, it only made him more popular." The confused look on Loki's face prompted her on. "He stapled a card to his assistant's eye. For real," she said, miming the action of a staple gun.

"The Amazing Johnathan!" Loki said excitedly. "That Johnathan, yes. I had heard of that. And the woman still worked with him after." He threw his hands up into the air with disbelief.

Darcy snorted. "You staple anything to me, and I'm bailing," she said.

"I'd at least expect you to finish the show," Loki said. Darcy couldn't tell if he was kidding or not, so she just snorted again.

"Which, by the way. Are you an afternoon or an evening show?" she asked, not sure which she'd even prefer.

Loki shook his head. "We haven't set showtimes yet," he said.

"No, no. Are these tricks you can put into a book for kids, or are you going to be bleeding all over the stage?" Darcy asked.

"Ah. Somewhere in between, I think," Loki said with a nod. "I can't afford to replace my shirt each night, but I do have swords and fire."

"Oh, I get to be stabbed with swords?" Darcy asked. It almost sounded fun, actually.

Loki grinned and shook his head. "No, you get to stab me. Unless you truly want to be the one getting stabbed."

"No, I like yours better," Darcy said. She had no idea what the routine actually was, but she already liked the sound of it.

Loki grinned, all smug and self-satisfied, while Georgia brought over a bright red evening dress. "We'll start with the main, and then go from there. Let's try this on and see where it takes us."

Loki suddenly looked very irritated. "It needs to be green," he said.

Georgia nodded. "It will be. We're just getting ideas now."

Loki settled back in his seat, apparently satisfied with that answer. With the dress in hand, Darcy looked around and wondered if she was expected to just strip right there in front of everybody.

"Uh. Where should I change?" she asked.

Loki pointed in the direction of the stage. "Dressing rooms are on the left," he said.

Darcy hesitated a long moment before going off to find them. When she did, they were remarkably similar to the ones she remembered from high school. Lots of mirrors and lights and a long shelf, but surprisingly little room to hold anything useful like costumes. Also like the dressing rooms from high school, the door didn't lock. Hoping her creepy new boss didn't turn out to be a seriously massive creep, Darcy quickly undressed and changed into the red dress Georgia had given her. It was long and flowing, with a deep v-cut down the front, and crisscrossed straps in the back. And as soon as she got it on, there was a problem. Not only was it way too long, it had clearly been designed for someone with no boobs at all. Popping out wasn't just a danger; it was an eventuality. With one hand holding up the hem and the other covering her chest, Darcy cautiously left the dressing room and peeked back into the green room.

"Yeah, this one doesn't work," she said.

Loki crooked his fingers anyway, and already having too much invested to throw it all out, Darcy stepped out from the hall. Loki stood and frowned immediately. "Are you still wearing those damned shoes?" he asked, looking down at her feet.

"Yeah," said Darcy.

"Take them off," Loki said.

While she slipped out of her shoes, Loki picked at the skirt and chewed his thumbnail. "I don't like the waist," he said. "It's too..." He frowned and reached out and pulled the fabric around Darcy's waist just a bit tighter.

Startled by the sudden and very unexpected contact, Darcy took a quick step back.

"Woah. In this country, we ask first," she said. "Just because you're British doesn't mean you get a free pass."

"I'm not British," Loki said.

"English. Whatever," Darcy corrected.

"Icelandic," Loki said.

It was enough of a curve ball that Darcy forgot to be angry with him. "Seriously?" she asked. "You sound British."

"And that's rather the point," said Loki. He let himself be waved off by Georgia as she stepped over to mess with hemlines and waistlines and do terrifying things with pins.

"What about a waistband?" she asked. Without waiting for anyone to respond, she went back over to her huge bin and dug out a long piece of fabric in the same colour as the dress. Folding it over a few times, she measured it against Darcy's waist, and then wrapped it tightly round.

Loki stood back and watched, still chewing on his thumbnail. While Georgia pinned everything in place, somehow managing not to stick Darcy even once, Loki nodded. "Yes, I think that's much better," he said.

"What about you, dear? You're the one who'll be wearing it every night," said Georgia.

Darcy looked down, trying to get a look without moving her arm and giving everyone else a completely different sort of look.

"Big problem in the upstairs department," she pointed out.

"Oh, yes there is," agreed Georgia. She managed to get everything secured without letting anything fall out and scribbled a bunch of stuff into a notebook.

"So, how does a bra work with this thing?" Darcy asked, looking over at the very visible blue strap on her shoulder.

"Backless," said Georgia. "Or go without."

Darcy groaned. "I better be getting paid so much for this," she said.

"An extra fifty dollars a night, I'd say," Georgia said. She handed Darcy another dress. "Let's try this one now," she said. "Careful of the pins."


	11. Chapter 11

There had been about two minutes when Loki thought the bigger stage would improve the quality of his act. Two minutes, before it came time to teach Darcy the sole box jumper in the entire show. The box wasn't built with a trick floor, because they jammed and didn't line up properly and were generally more hassle than they were worth, but now Loki was beginning to wish it had been. Loki looked at the black and chrome box on centre stage, standing tall and lonely with nothing else even close enough to it to make it work. It was on wheels, so Loki pushed it back against the backdrop and stepped away. Even from up on stage, it looked gaffed. Too much open space in front of it gave the distinct impression that its back panel was more of a door. He looked out over the house and sighed, wishing he had his tiny little pub stage again.

"Darcy, close the curtain," he said, pointing off in the general direction of the rope. While she went backstage to do that, Loki pulled the box back up to the proscenium again. With the curtain closed, the area was far more suitable for the routine, but it still made it look like something was going to happen with the curtain.

"No, I don't like that either," Loki said.

"Want me to open it again?" Darcy asked.

Loki looked at what he had to work with and sighed. "Yeah," he said. As the curtains slid open again, Loki looked back into the wings and frowned. They offered little help, so Loki looked up at the fly system. It was rudimentary at best, with just a few bars running across from either side, and just as useless as anything else backstage.

"Darcy," Loki said suddenly, giving the box a light push forward. "Can you move this?"

"The box?" Darcy stepped out onto the stage and stopped next to Loki. She reached out and gave the box a little nudge, moving it easily over the floor. "Yeah," she said.

Loki pulled open the door and stepped inside. "Now?" he asked.

Darcy pushed against it again, and even with Loki's added weight, moved it about a foot before stopping. "Yeah," she said with a shrug.

Loki scratched his head and stepped out of the box. "I need a stagehand," he said. He looked around, hoping to find someone to conscript, but the theatre was empty of random people. Unless he wanted to wait until later to work everything out and teach the routine to Darcy, they'd have to do without.

"No, actually. I need a stopwatch," Loki decided. He pulled his phone from his pocket and poked at the screen, but didn't know where to even start to look to find one.

"Uh. Here," said Darcy as she grabbed her own phone. She seemed to know what he was doing with it, and quickly handed it over, all ready to go. Loki hated iPhones even more than he hated his Samsung, but it too would have to do.

Loki tapped the start button and ran backstage. Darcy was shouting something at him, but he ignored it as he pushed through the heavy doors and continued out to the hall. He ran around the theatre, turning down the corridor that led to the house. As soon as he was back in, he stopped the phone and nodded at it.

"Forty five seconds," he announced.

Darcy spun round to face him.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, throwing her hands into the air.

Loki walked back up to the stage and handed her phone back. "The amount of time you have to stall," he said.

He walked back to the prop room to grab his golf bag full of swords and wheeled it to centre stage. He brought the box over next to it, fiddling with the placement of both until they were exactly where he wanted them. Satisfied with the way it looked, he waved Darcy over.

"There are numbers here. On the side." He pointed to one of the thin slits in the side of the box, with "1" written beneath it in black Sharpie. "Fifteen. Do them in order. They're all angled to make sure the blades go where they need to."

Darcy turned to look at the swords next to her. "Are the swords numbered?" she asked.

Loki shook his head. "No, but they are real. I don't keep them sharp, but I still don't want to be stabbed." He handed her one of the swords and held his hand out toward the box. "Get used it it a few times without me in it. Then we'll go through the patter."

"Kay." Darcy took the sword and fed it through the first slot, visibly struggling to keep it balanced.

"Don't fight it," Loki said. He reached over and pulled the sword back out before Darcy bent it. "If it doesn't want to go in straight, don't try to force it."

"Kay," Darcy repeated. She lined the sword up and tried again, more fluidly slotting it into place this time. Once it was in all the way, Loki handed her another.

Darcy spent several long seconds looking for the second slot before finding it and feeding the sword in.

"You'll need to have this memorised," Loki told her.

"I will. This is my first time seeing it. Give me a break." She took the third sword from him, found the appropriate slot, and slid the sword in.

Once she finished, Loki started pulling the swords out and putting them back in the golf bag.

"Can you swallow swords?" Darcy asked.

"Yes, but these aren't for swallowing," said Loki as he pulled one out from the box. He looked down at it and pulled out two more. "They're for this."

He took two long steps backwards, and after checking his distance from everything, started juggling them. They weren't actually for juggling either, and were far too long to spin, so he had to try to keep them with the blades pointing upward. It only took a few seconds before he lost that balance and one started to tumble. Loki quickly stepped back, letting all three of the swords fall with a clatter.

"They're not for that," he admitted as he picked them back up.

"You just wanted to show off," Darcy said, wide-eyed.

Loki shrugged and put the swords back into the bag. "Perhaps," he admitted.

"You should do that in the show," said Darcy, stepping close again.

Loki looked out over the stage again. It was definitely big enough. "Maybe. I'll have to practise." He finished putting all of the swords back and stepped away. "All right. Do it again."

Loki stood by while Darcy ran through the sequence three more times. She didn't get any faster in finding the proper slots, but she did get the swords through much more smoothly than she had done the first time. Relatively confident that he wouldn't be skewered, Loki stepped forward again to decide how the rest of the routine should go.

"This stage is not doing us any favours, so you need to play this one up," he said. He opened the box and stepped inside.

"I will get in here, at centre stage," he said. Then he stepped out again and pushed it back to stage right. "You need to get it right here before sword six. By the end, I want it over on stage left, and then down centre again."

Darcy turned and nodded. "What, like? Do you want me to just push it around and show it off, or am I pretending I don't want to be all over the place?" she asked.

"Make it seem accidental," Loki said.

Darcy grinned widely and laughed. "Do I get to be your psychic Tanya?" she asked.

It was not an option Loki had even considered. Katrín had always played the proverbial straight man in their act, and most of their routines were framed around her refusal to make a fool of herself onstage.

"I don't know if the stage could handle that much stupid," Loki said, pushing the box back to centre stage once more.

"Oh, are you an idiot, too?" Darcy asked eagerly.

Loki grinned at her, exaggerated and toothy. "Such an idiot," he said. "That was what Katrín played off, when we were in Reykjavík. She was always pissed off at me for being useless."

Darcy pulled one of the swords from the golf bag and looked at the polished blade. "So, what? I should be like, stabbing you because I'm pissed, and you're in a convenient stabby box?" she asked.

"Very apt," said Loki. He pointed back offstage. "You. Back left. Take those with you. Let's run this."

Darcy put the sword back into the golf bag and wheeled it back offstage to go wait in the wings. Loki watched her go, and nodded when he was ready.

"We start with this being brought out. I'm usually still picking up cards at this point. Let the audience get a good look at it, and then it starts." He straightened up his posture as he fell into character, and gave the box a startled look. "Oh, yes. This. This is the wrong accent," he realised irritably. After ten years, it might wind up proving a difficult habit to break, which was not a factor he had previously considered. Clearing his throat, Loki started again with a conscious effort to remember to sound like a proper Icelander.

"Oh, yes," he said again, getting it right this time. "This is a very special item from back home. They're very old. I found this one in a collection on the street, next to some bins. But, you know. It smells fine."

"Oh my god," Darcy said from offstage.

Loki dutifully ignored her and opened the door. "But it still works. Anything you place inside vanishes. Anything. Like this."

He pulled a large golden-yellow foam ball from his pocket and put it on the floor of the box.

"You put the ball in there, close the door," Loki closed the door and turned back to the house, "and when you look in once more, it is gone!"

He opened the door widely and bowed, only looking back into the box when he was standing again. "No. No. Wait," he said, shutting the door quickly. "One more time. You put the ball in, give the box a spin," as he spun the box around, he very obviously opened the door and threw the ball into the wings. He slammed the door shut again just as he completed the circle, "and the ball is gone!"

This time when he threw open the door, the ball was indeed gone, and the box empty. Offstage, Darcy was laughing like she couldn't quite believe what she'd just witnessed.

"Such an idiot," she said.

Still, Loki ignored her and continued as if he hadn't said anything.

"But it's much more interesting with something bigger. Something like a person," Loki said. He stepped inside the box and closed the door, only to open it back up immediately. "Okay, good. You're all still here."

He dropped character and peered out at Darcy. "When I close the door, you step out, see me in the convenient stabby box, and go back for the swords. I count down from five, and on one, the first sword goes through," he said.

"Awesome. Stabbing time," Darcy said.

Loki threw her an uncertain look. "If I hit the side three times, you stop," Loki said. "That means you've stabbed me and lost your job."

"No actual stabbing. Got it," Darcy said, nodding.

Loki still wasn't sure if this was going to wind up being a mistake, but he closed the door anyway. "I am going to count down from five. On zero, the door will magically open, and I will be gone," he continued. He pressed himself up against the back wall of the box and began counting down, appearing to become more and more uncertain with each number. "Three. Uhm, uh. Er. Two? Uhmmm. Uhhhh. One," he said slowly. Right on cue, Darcy pushed the first sword through the box, missing Loki entirely. He reached over it and leaned as far out of the box as he could.

"I start shouting and swearing now. Slam the door on my face and keep going," Loki instructed.

"And get you to stage right by number six," Darcy confirmed.

"Yes," Loki said.

Nodding, Darcy slammed the door shut and picked up the second sword. She drove it into the slot, trying to give the box a good shove at the same time, rather leaving Loki with the fear that the whole thing would topple over.

"Do you want me to spin it?" she asked.

Loki arched again to avoid the third sword. "Just make sure the front is facing the house when we're in position," he said.

The box lurched and rocked as Darcy threw everything into fighting against the box. When Loki counted the sixth sword, he reached behind him and unlatched the back door, slipping easily out of the box.

"We'll have to mark it, but I need it as close to the wings as possible," he said. "If we use a black board, I can sneak out. When you get to left, twist it around to show the back." He shut the door again, making it seem like there was never a door at all.

"While you do that, I run around the halls and come find a seat at the back of the house," Loki finished. Rather than running around, he stepped down off the stage and wandered down the near aisle. He picked a seat at random and sat to watch Darcy finish her part of the routine. When she had all fifteen swords in place, and the box more or less at centre stage, she looked back out at Loki.

"You open the door now, and just walk back offstage," he said.

Darcy did with an abundance of spite and petulance, showing the empty house the empty box.

"Spotlight out here on me," Loki said, standing again and walking back up to the stage. "'Oh, how did I get here?' Trick is done. Back to your place, because we're running it at least ten times today."

Darcy hesitated a few moments before going backstage, leaving Loki to reset the trick.


	12. Chapter 12

"Where can I get a duck?" asked Loki.

Darcy was so tired from running rehearsal for twelve hours a day, seven days straight, she wasn't even sure she'd heard him right.

"What? Why do you want a duck?" she asked, hoping that's what he'd actually said. She looked down at the tangled rope in her hand, realising she had completely forgotten what she was supposed to be doing with it. Luckily, Loki wasn't even watching. He'd wandered off to think about ducks, apparently.

"For the same reason you need to get some better shoes," Loki said.

Darcy pulled her phone from her pocket and looked at the time. Normally, 9pm didn't seem very late at all, but it might as well have said 3am for as worn down as she felt. She sighed and tossed the rope over to Loki.

"Fine. Let's go buy some shoes, then. I'll even let you pick them out if it means we can be done today." For a second, she thought Loki was going to throw the rope back at her and tell her to learn how to tie the damn knots, but he surprised her and dropped the rope to the ground.

"And a duck," he said as he wandered backstage to the fuse box.

Darcy followed after him so she didn't get stuck out on the dark stage again. "I don't think you can just go out and buy a duck here. Unless you want to go to Chang's, and get a cooked duck. You should talk to Lance Burton, if you want a big white one. I know he loaned one to Penn and Teller a few years ago," she told him as he flipped the switches with a loud clang. "Or you might be able to get one from Wayne Newton if you want one of those little green ducks."

With the stage a nice, dark safety hazard, they walked back out to the green room. Over the last week, it had gone from looking like someone had used it to store a bunch of random chairs and a couch to looking like an under-paid college student's dorm room. Loki had managed to find a few chairs that didn't fold up or stack, and a small refrigerator for storing the questionable delivery they'd practically lived off during rehearsals. Looking at the generic white pizza boxes stacked up on top of the fridge, Darcy wondered if she might be able to get lucky and talk her way into a real dinner while they were out shoe shopping.

"So, why do you want a duck?" Darcy asked as she picked up her bag and dug her keys out.

"I need a very big misdirection during one of the card tricks," Loki said. He held open the door to the parking lot, waiting for Darcy to get out so he could lock up.

She took the hint and walked outside, basking in the early-summer warmth that still hung around long after the sun set. The breeze coming from the lake was warm but pleasant, just strong enough to make the palm trees sway, but not strong enough to kick up sand and grit. "So, why a duck?" she asked, facing into the wind to let it blow her hair back off her neck.

Loki shrugged as he shut off the green room lights and locked the door. "So you have something to chase across the stage," he said.

Darcy could have sworn her heart stopped. "You what?" she asked slowly. "You're buying a duck so I can chase it?"

Loki grinned the most insincere grin ever. "Yes. Sounds fun, doesn't it?"

"No!" Darcy said as she walked over to her car. "I don't want to chase a duck. Ducks are fucking mean. Sure, they look all cute and cuddly, but they'll fuck you up."

As soon as Darcy unlocked the doors, Loki let himself into the passenger seat. "All the more reason for you to chase it, instead of me."

Darcy would have kicked him out of her car if he wasn't twice her size and metaphorically signing her paycheques. "Oh my god. I don't want these new shoes," she said as she started the car. "Not if it means you're going to make me chase a duck."

Darcy pulled out onto Flamingo and got into the far right lane as quickly as possible, cutting off a double-decker bus. She laughed at Loki as he braced himself against the dash with both hands. As soon as they were out of the bus' path, he reached over his shoulder and quickly buckled his seatbelt.

"Buckle up," Darcy chirped at him.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

"Driving," Darcy told him.

Loki slid his seat all the way back, making the locking mechanism crunch ominously. Trying to ignore it, Darcy turned on the radio. After about two seconds of some new Foo Fighters song, Loki switched the station.

"Hey! My car, my music," Darcy told him, switching the radio back to X107.5.

"I hate the Foo Fighters," Loki said grumpily.

They weren't Darcy's favourite either, but somehow letting the song keep going felt like payback for having to chase ducks and get stuck with pins. She turned the volume up.

"It'll be over in like, two minutes. Then they'll probably play Mumford and Sons or something."

Loki actually growled. "I can't believe your stations actually play the same shitty music you send to us," he said.

Darcy laughed. "Hey, we send it because it's popular. No guarantee on quality," she said.

The back-up at the boulevard reached as far back as Koval. The bus Darcy had cut off earlier was now right behind her, and stopped so close to her car that if she backed up at all, she'd back right into it.

"Where are we going?" Loki asked.

Darcy looked out at the sea of stopped cars. "Forum. Fashion Show'll probably be closed by the time we get there," she said.

Loki looked like he was going to question her further, but then the Foo Fighters were replaced by Mumford and Sons, and Loki actually screamed and covered his ears. Darcy wasn't sure if it was scary or funny, but she laughed anyway.

"Oh my god. Fine. Change it," she said.

Loki started flipping through the stations, apparently not finding anything he liked. "Where are we going?" he asked again.

"Caesar's Palace," Darcy told him, going for the simpler answer this time.

"Isn't that a casino?" asked Loki, pausing on a Spanish station for a few moments, before he started flipping through again.

"It has a mall," Darcy said. She glanced over at him as traffic started moving again. "Haven't you done the tourist thing yet?"

Loki shook his head and put the radio back on the Spanish station. "I tried, but it was too hot."

That was something Darcy had heard about a million times before. "You sound like my friend Don," she said.

Loki cracked a wry smile. "Your friend Don sounds intelligent," he said. Darcy couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Darcy laughed anyway. "No. Well, yeah. I mean, I assume he is. But he's just from... Actually, I don't know where he's from. He's never said. He sounds kind of like you when you do your stage voice, but it's different. I can't really explain it."

"What brought him to this hell hole?" Loki asked, actually sounding like he was interested in hearing her answer.

"He's studying to be a doctor," she said. "I think that came after his decision to come here, though. I think like everyone else, he just kind of settled here by accident."

"Then what brought you here?" Loki asked, almost sounding like he was trying to flirt.

"Me? Nothing. Two million people in this city, and I'm like, the only one who was born here." It was a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

"Seriously?" Loki asked.

"Well. No. Not really. A lot of the kids I went to school with were born here too," Darcy said.

"Two million?"

It wasn't exactly a huge number, Darcy didn't think. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Something like that. It's mostly a transient population, though, and it doesn't count all the millions and millions of tourists here."

Loki looked out the window at the Flamingo Hotel, like he'd never seen such a thing before. And then Darcy realised that he probably hadn't. He'd grown up on some little patch of ice that probably only had about 200 people on it. Two million probably seemed like an impossible number to him.

"Do you want to get something to eat?" Darcy asked, hastily trying to change the subject. "Something that doesn't come in a Styrofoam box."

Loki looked back over at her. "What's good?" he asked.

Darcy shrugged and turned onto the Boulevard. "At Caesar's? Just about everything."

Traffic on the Boulevard was moving just as slowly as it had been on Flamingo, and with everyone trying to change lanes — Darcy included — it was also a loud, blaring headache waiting to happen. She managed to sneak into the turn that took her to Caesar's valet and gladly handed off her keys to a man in a black waistcoat.

"How much is this going to cost me?" Loki grumbled as he got out of the car and stepped onto the marble-smooth pavement.

Darcy smiled up at him, waving her valet ticket in his face. "Nothing. Why would it cost you anything?"

Loki batted the ticket out of his face. "Because it's valet," he said.

He started making his way inside, getting almost immediately lost. Rolling her eyes, Darcy followed after him and herded him up the escalator. It took them to a wide corridor, putting them on a path straight into the casino. Darcy turned around and went the other way, leading Loki back toward the mall. She'd almost wanted to make Loki take her to Trevi, but the mile-long line to be seated changed her mind in a huge hurry.

"There's a Cheesecake Factory in here somewhere. Let's find it," she said, turning left at the fountain and heading down the path.

Loki grumbled, but followed her. "I don't want cheesecake," he said.

"They have real food. Why are you always so negative?" Darcy asked him. She looked at the shops as they passed, secretly wondering which one was the best place to get shoes. Probably not the Apple Store.

As they came to the end of the corridor, music and a booming electronic voice carried over the crowd. His curiosity obviously getting the better of him, Loki stood up straight to look over everyone else to see what the big deal was. The big deal being a bunch of moving statues that were all kind of broken and sad and didn't really move anymore because they were about a million years old.

"Come on. If we're lucky, there won't be much of a wait," she said, tugging on Loki's sleeve and dragging him around the fountain to the restaurant.

The girl at the front trying to seat everyone seemed like she'd been ready to go home two hours ago. She moved with the kind of forced hurry of someone trying to speed up time as she went back and forth from the podium to one of the counters inside the restaurant. Even with only three groups in front of them, Loki sighed and rolled his eyes again. Darcy could see he was about to do something, but by the time she realised it, he'd already started.

"How long is this going to take?" Loki asked tiredly.

The girl looked up at him and put on a fake smile. "About twenty minutes, sir," she said.

Loki looked over and pointed at an empty table. "That one's empty."

Darcy clouted him with her elbow, and he elbowed her right back.

"That one's reserved," the girl said, losing her smile.

Loki checked his watch. "Well, they're late. Give it to someone else."

"Oh my god, fine. We'll eat somewhere else," Darcy said, turning to leave. "What kind of spoilt brat can't wait in a line?"

"It was your idea to go there," Loki said, following after her. "It's not my fault they can't seat their customers."

Darcy made a mental amendment. This guy was nothing like Don. Don was at least polite. "No. It's not. It's your fault you're such a dick. Just buy me my shoes so I can chase your fucking duck, and don't you ever start, I heard it."

She kept walking until she found Gucci. Like all the other stores in the mall, it was bright and open, with the sort of minimal inventory that just screamed expensive price tags. Darcy almost felt bad about it, but there was a really big part of her that thought Loki deserved to lose some money. Besides, he could just write it off anyway. The seven-foot-tall security guard by the door watched them as they walked in, looking like he was just waiting for someone to try to steal something so he could rip their arms off.

Darcy sat down on a bench against the wall and waved her arm at the shoes. "Go on. And be nice, or I'm wearing my mules and not running at all."

Loki sneered at her and walked over to the shoe rack. "What size do you wear?" he asked.

"Eight," said Darcy.

"Eight?" Loki parroted, turning back to her. "Stop being difficult. What size do you wear?"

Darcy took off one of her shoes and threw it at him. He clumsily caught it out of the air and looked inside, frowning at what he saw. "Eight."

She expected him to throw the shoe back, but he kept it as he looked over the selection of assorted black dressy shoes. He stared ahead and chewed on his thumbnail, putting an almost creepy amount of thought into the task.

"This would be easier if we had your dress here with us," he said.

"I'm not going back to get it. Give me my shoe," Darcy said.

Loki looked down at the shoe in his hand. "No, it's mine now," he decided. After a few more minutes of looking like a serious creep, he picked up a pair of black kitten heels with three small straps over the toes, and an even smaller ankle strap.

"Can you run in these?" he asked, holding them up.

Darcy knew she couldn't run in anything with a heel. "Define run," she said. "Am I sprinting?"

"You're chasing a duck," Loki said, like that was an answer to her question.

Not sure what else to do, Darcy sighed and got up. "I don't know. Let's try," she said. She waved down the lone clerk behind the counter and pointed at the shoe in Loki's hand.

"Can we get this in an eight?" she asked.

The clerk walked over and looked at what he was being sent to go fetch. "Yeah, let me go get that for you real quick."

He ducked through a door behind the register as the security guard turned his attention inward to the store. Darcy started looking at some nearby shirts, wishing she could just drop $120 on a single item like that. The sales clerk quickly came back with a shoebox in his hands and gave it to Darcy. She leaned against Loki for balance while she put the shoes on, feeling like she was going to break the tiny little buckle as soon as she touched it.

"Can you run?" asked Loki.

Darcy was tempted to hit him, but she didn't. Instead, she stood up and moved as quickly as she could across the floor. By the second step, she knew it was going to be a disaster, and when her heel decided it didn't want to support her weight, almost making her fall over gracelessly, she wasn't surprised at all. She managed to catch herself on the table full of shirts and glared back at Loki.

"You run in them," she said, trying to wrench the shoes off her feet without breaking the straps.

Loki turned back to the clerk. "I'll take them," he said.

Darcy looked up sharply. "No, we won't," she said.

Loki nodded. "I'll take them," he repeated.

Darcy growled at Loki as he handed the shoes back to the clerk to be boxed up. While Loki was occupied with asking about their return policy and trying to figure out what $80 converted to in money he understood, Darcy picked up her shoe and turned and walked out of the store, letting Loki keep the other shoe. She didn't even care. She didn't get dinner, she looked like an idiot in the middle of a mall, and she felt so vindicated in making very swift tracks back down to valet so she could leave Loki at the mall. When she got her car back, she tipped the valet her last five dollar bill and slammed the door so hard it echoed through the entire garage.

She wanted to drive angry, and peel out like some kind of madwoman, but Strip traffic pretty much killed that urge as soon as it arose. By the time she got back onto Flamingo, she decided that all she really wanted was to eat. She passed right by her apartment and swung around to Taco Bell to get a loaded griller she knew she was going to regret. There was even a line at the drive-through there, but Darcy waited it out with a forced calm, just to prove that she could. With a few orders of churros as well, she drove back around the park to her apartment building, ready for dinner and a no-pants zone.

Upstairs, her apartment greeted her with a wall of hot, stagnant air. Flipping the air conditioner on as she shut and locked the door, Darcy went straight to the sofa and fell face-down on it. It was only the fact that she had dinner literally in her hand that made her sit up. Ready for some personal time, she turned on the TV, pulled off her one shoe, and started in on her churros. She finished off the first bag fairly quickly, and was halfway through the griller when a knock at the door made her just a little bit glad that she hadn't got round to getting undressed yet. She was tempted to just ignore it, and pretend she wasn't home, but whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again. Sighing tiredly, Darcy got up and peeked out the window to see who was bothering her, and was a little disappointed that it wasn't her obnoxious neighbour asking if she had any cigarettes.

"Go away," she shouted through the window at Loki.

He held his hands up in a dramatic shrug, made even more ridiculous by the Gucci bag in one hand and a ratty old sneaker in the other. Shaking her head, Darcy turned back to the sofa to finish her dinner, but Loki apparently wasn't done. He banged on the door like he was trying to break it down before Darcy could even get across the tiny room. She knew she should have ignored him, because he was probably insane, but he was also pissing her off. And she wanted her shoe back. Gritting her teeth, she spun back round and stomped over to the door. She quickly unlocked it and flung it open, barely able to step out of the way quickly enough.

"What?" she demanded, snatching her shoe from Loki's hand.

"You left me there," Loki said incredulously, trying to step into the apartment. Darcy put herself directly in his way.

"Yeah. Because you were being an ass. Fuck off," she said, trying to push him back out to the path without actually touching him, but he was a lot bigger than her, and wasn't really moving at all.

"So what? You're quitting?" asked Loki.

Darcy almost said yes out of spite, but she managed to stop herself before she did anything stupid. "No. I'll be there bright and early tomorrow morning, but you are not allowed to come to my house and make me be the person who gets into a fight with their front door wide open," she said.

She tried to muscle Loki away again, but it still wasn't working.

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"I want to know why you thought it was funny to leave me behind," Loki said. Either he really was an idiot, or he wanted to try to win by making her the more pissed off of the two of them. And if that was his plan, it was working.

Darcy threw her hands into the air and resisted the urge to walk away. "I left because you were being an asshole. I left because I didn't want to be seen with you anymore. I left because I don't want to chase a duck, I don't want to run in heels, and I don't want to be the person having a fight out on the path!"

They both stood awkwardly after that, Darcy hoping none of her neighbours had reached the call-the-cops point of irritation yet. And with Loki still not leaving, it was probably going to get to that point very soon. Darcy sighed in irritation and finally stepped back to open the way inside.

"Fine. Whatever. I don't even care anymore," she said, wondering what would happen to her job if she called the cops on her boss. It would probably disappear in a puff of smoke when Loki the illegal immigrant got his pasty ass deported.

Loki stepped inside, but not far enough to be able to close the door. He looked around the apartment at the shelves of books and props Darcy barely had room to store.

"This is where you live?" he asked.

Darcy laughed. "That's rich, coming from the guy who lives in a hotel."

Finally, Loki stepped all the way inside and shut the door. "It's better than the last one I was staying in. I'm pretty sure it had bed bugs."

"Do not sit down on anything," Darcy said, stepping away from him and throwing her shoe over to where she'd dropped the other one. "Seriously, I just got rid of those fuckers, and I am not doing it again."

Loki raised his hands in surrender and put the Gucci bag down on the coffee table. Instead of sitting down, he turned his attention to the shelf beside the television and reached straight for the small comic book next to the cups and balls set.

"What's this?" he asked.

Darcy flapped her arms. "That's Blackstone, and that's not for touching!" she said, trying to figure out how to wrench the book from Loki's fingers without hurting it.

She didn't have to. Loki obediently put it back down and cringed. "Blackstone had comic books?" he asked.

"Yes. And they're very old. Don't touch my stuff," Darcy scolded.

Loki's attention drifted to the shelf by the sofa, eventually settling on the multi-coloured set of books on the middle shelf. Despite being told not seconds earlier to keep his hands to himself, he reached out and plucked the first volume off the shelf.

"Tarbell," he mused as he opened the book and flipped through the pages. "Most people stop after volume one."

Darcy sighed, trying to stay calm. "Yeah, my grandma got them for me. A new volume every year for my birthday, starting when I was six. The first one came with a full kit, but the other seven were just the books."

"I had to buy all of mine myself," Loki said. He slid the book back into its place, making sure it was aligned evenly with the rest of its family. "Before the internet. And then I had to have them shipped to Iceland. I never had any pocket money."

He obviously wasn't going to get to the point any time soon. Darcy snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. "Sucks to be you," she said.

Loki cast an annoyed glance in her direction, and then looked back up at the chrome zombie ball on the top shelf.

"You obviously know what you're doing. So why won't you do the bit?" he asked.

Darcy tried not to laugh. "Because I like my ankles unbroken," she said.

Loki bit his lip and inhaled deeply. Darcy recognised the look on his face as the same one he wore when one of the stage crew couldn't get something right, and Loki was seconds away from losing it and shouting at everyone.

"Its three seconds of chasing a duck across the stage," he said with a forced calm.

Darcy crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "I'm not chasing the duck," she said firmly.

She wondered how hard it was for Loki to not start shouting, since it looked like that was what he wanted to do most in the world right then. He rubbed his face with his hand, taking extra long to respond.

"If not a duck, then what will you chase?" he asked slowly.

Darcy shook her head. "No. You're not getting this. It's not the duck. It's the running in heels. I can't do it. I'm not going to do it. And that's it." She spoke very slowly to make sure Loki caught every word of what she had to say. Between being a man, an idiot, and not a native English speaker, he clearly needed all the help he could get.

"The heels aren't that big," Loki said, pointing at the Gucci bag as if it meant anything.

"I almost smashed head first into a table, in front of an entire mall, because you can't take no for an answer," Darcy said. "I don't care how small the heels are. I am not running in them."

She walked over to the door and opened it, showing Loki the parking lot below.

"I don't know how you got here, but you need to leave," she said.

Loki didn't move. "I took a cab," he said.

"Good. Take another one. Get out of my house," Darcy told him. She waited silently, watching him as he finally picked up his Gucci bag and walked out to the path without another word. She slammed the door behind him, locking it with more force than necessary, just to be sure he stayed out.


	13. Chapter 13

Loki stood backstage, looking up at the curtains. They were finally right after days of fighting with the crew about them, but now it hardly mattered. He'd managed to chase off his assistant less than two hours after finding out she could probably help him with his real reason for coming to America. And from what he'd already seen, the chances of finding a replacement who actually knew how to do magic were surprisingly slim. And without a replacement, his show was dead in the water.

And without the show, he wouldn't have the money to stay in Las Vegas for very long, which wouldn't give him the chance to track down Thor. It was a domino effect of bad karma and endless grief.

Not sure what else to do, Loki gave up and walked back to the green room to feed his fish and write up another audition announcement. While he was trying to figure out the legality of auditioning "female magicians only; pole dancers need not apply," the door to the parking lot opened suddenly, startling him in his seat. Even more surprising than the door opening was Darcy walking through it. Loki dropped his notebook to the floor and sighed loudly.

"Oh, thank god. I thought you quit," he said.

"Nope," said Darcy tersely. "I said I'd be here, and here I am."

She dropped her handbag onto the sofa and started to walk right past Loki to the stage.

"Barefoot," Loki said before she could get too far.

Darcy turned. "What?" she asked, looking down at her feet, and then at Loki's.

"I was thinking, and it might be funnier if you ran barefoot, holding your shoes," Loki said calmly. "You can even wear the ones you wanted to wear originally. The tall ones."

Darcy closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. "Why do I need to be running at all?" she asked.

A question, Loki realised, he should have probably answered the night before. "Misdirection. I need to make three switches, so the misdirection needs to be big." He stood finally, but didn't step any closer to her.

"How did you do it before?" Darcy asked.

Loki smirked. "Katrín chased our raven out. I couldn't bring him with me because the time he'd have to spend in quarantine would have probably killed him." Which was a shame, because despite the bird's moodiness, he was wonderfully trained. And not a boring old dove.

"Oh." Darcy started to make her way to the stage again, apparently determined to suffer the world's most uncomfortable work day.

"I was also thinking about what you said last night," Loki said, stopping her again.

"All that thinking. Did you hurt yourself?" she asked, turning back to face him.

Loki clamped down on his reaction and made sure he was calm before he replied. "You're a very rude woman," he said, apparently not as calm as he thought.

"And you're a massive prick. I guess we're even," said Darcy.

Loki closed his eyes and ignored that jab, taking a few more moments to say what he needed to say.

"I think perhaps I have been working you too hard the last few weeks," he said. He didn't actually believe that, and judging by the unimpressed look on Darcy's face, she'd picked up on that lie as well. "The show is coming up soon, but you're fairly solid on most of it, and I think you deserve a day off. We also don't know one another very well, and I think that's making it difficult to work with one another. I would like to also apologise for insulting your home last night. It was not my intent, but I still did it, and I'm sorry."

Darcy stared at him dubiously, not taking the bait. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her weight back on one foot. "Should I be filing a sexual harassment complaint right now? What are you suggesting?" she asked.

She was an infuriating woman, and there was a very big part of Loki that was annoyed she came back after their row. The part of him that didn't care that she was useful beyond measure. He clamped down on all his irritation and kept going as calmly as he could manage.

"I was going to ask if you might like to help me do some apartment hunting today. A day off where we can get to know one another, and I can hopefully stop living in a hotel," he explained. "You live here, so I hoped you might be able to help me out, because you'd know better than I would if I'm getting ripped off. Or you can go home and come back tomorrow and we can try to start over from there."

It took Darcy a long time to respond, making Loki brace for the worst. Finally, she sighed and nodded. "Okay. But you're paying for gas. And I want lunch, where you don't shout at someone working their shitty minimum wage job," she said. "And don't touch my radio. My car, my music."

She turned back to the door, picking up her handbag on her way back outside. Standing alone in the green room, Loki buried his face in his hands and breathed in very deeply, trying to keep calm. This woman was going to be his death, one way or another. Either he'd give himself a stroke trying to keep her happy, or she'd snap and slit his throat backstage.

Not wanting to keep her waiting too long, Loki shut off all the lights and locked up before following her out to her car. As soon as he sat down, he buckled his seatbelt in case she decided to try to play chicken with a bus again.

"Where are we going?" Darcy asked as she started the car.

Loki pulled a piece of notebook paper from his pocket and unfolded it. "I've found a few places. Where's Centennial?" he asked.

"Too far away," Darcy said, looking over at him. "Unless we're going car shopping today as well."

Loki frowned. "What about…" he frowned even more at the street he'd written down that had nothing to do with his apartment search. "Hoo-ala-pay?" Somehow, he knew that wasn't even close to right.

"What?" Darcy tilted the page so she could see it. "Walla-pie," she said. "And you don't want to live out there either. It's all new, so rent's like, a million dollars, and it's way out on the edge of town.

Loki barely heard any of it. He was still too busy trying to work out how 'Hualapai' sounded like Walla-pie. "I hate English. Since when does H make that sound?"

"Ten points from Slytherin," said Darcy. "It's not English. It's Native American."

"Don't they speak English?" asked Loki.

"Twenty points from Slytherin." Darcy took his sheet of paper and looked over it. "Yeah, you don't want to live in any of these places until you get a car." She frowned at it and handed it back. "My friend Don lives out on Hualapai, somewhere. With like, three other guys. It's nuts."

She finally pulled out of the parking lot and took a right onto Flamingo, turning back off again at a petrol station just up the road. Leaving the car running and in park, she jumped out and ran up to the stacks of newspapers and magazines up against the side of the shop. She grabbed one and quickly came back, tossing the little magazine at Loki as she closed her door.

"What's your budget?" Darcy asked.

Loki flipped through the Apartment Hunter magazine and shrugged. "I don't know? What's reasonable?"

"Okay. One bedroom, seven or eight hundred at the very top, but you can find them for a lot less. Look in, oh. Paradise, Winchester. Maybe Spring Valley. You're not getting any place within a mile of me, though. And you'll need to get a car, unless you want to be the only professional magician in the city to take the bus to work."

Loki kept flipping through the magazine, seeing page after page of palm trees and brown stucco. "Should we do that first? Maybe look for an apartment after?" The advance he got from Fischer was supposed to be for getting all of his stuff over from Reykjavík, but he hadn't shipped all of it over yet, and still had about half of the advance left.

Darcy looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped and pulled out her phone. After tapping at the screen for a little bit, she handed it over to Loki. He looked down at the endless Craigslist page full of cars for sale, not sure if it was a good idea. He scrolled through it, tapping on a few that were under the $4000 he still had left.

"Should I phone them?" he asked, looking at a black BMW on the tiny screen.

Darcy killed the engine and nodded. "Yeah, I've got unlimited minutes," she said, not sounding as okay with it as her words made it seem.

Twenty minutes later, they were on their way out to someplace called Boulder City, which Loki doubted would be a city at all. They left Las Vegas behind, and were driving toward a low mountain range in the distance, the only feature on the flat, brown landscape.

"Okay, so. I'll bite," said Darcy, sounding almost conversational for the first time all day. "What's with the accent? I want to know."

Loki smirked as he watched the little blue dot travel across the map on Darcy's phone.

"It was a joke. At first. There was a big scandal about ten years ago," he explained. "One of our MPs went on television and said that Iceland would be better off if all all the foreigners were rounded up and sent back to where they belonged. There were riots."

"I heard about that, I think!" Darcy said.

Loki blinked, not expecting that reaction at all. "Really?" he asked. He didn't think news ever traveled out of Iceland. And if it did, certainly not to America.

"Yeah. I wasn't really paying attention, because it was in a class that I hated. He had this serious Viking kind of name," Darcy said. She pounded her hands against the steering wheel. "Oh, what was it. Sven or some shit, I don't know."

"Thor," Loki said, laughing. He watched her for a moment, but she had no idea at all. Unless through some cosmic coincidence, her friend happened to be living an identical life to Thor, she was completely blind to who he really was.

"Yeah, I was nowhere close," Darcy said.

Loki shook his head. "Miles off."

"So, what's that have to do with you?" Darcy asked.

"I was born to English parents, but lived in Reykjavík my whole life," Loki explained. "I was just getting my act started when all this happened, and decided it would be funny to be English while on stage. And now, ten years later, I have the worst accent imaginable when I speak Icelandic. I have to force it. It's terrible."

They passed by a casino, sitting right up against the low, and surprisingly small mountain range. Outside the casino, there was an electronic letter board that announced the temperature at 90°, making Loki immensely thankful for air conditioning. At least he was getting used to Fahrenheit, instead of thinking the world was ending every time he saw the temperature being announced on the side of the road.

"So what happened to him? The guy?" Darcy asked.

Loki shrugged. "Nobody knows. He disappeared after that. A lot of people think he was probably murdered," he said.

"Oh my god," said Darcy.

"What class was this, that you had to read about this?" Loki asked.

Darcy rolled her eyes. "This lame-ass politics in media class. I thought I might want to go into politics, and the class sounded fun on paper, but it wound up just being an entire semester of stupid racist idiots saying stupid racist things on television. If I wanted that, I could just turn on FOX News." She looked over at him and shrugged. "Like, sometimes we'd get to watch the interviews and press conferences, but the teacher wanted to be all worldly and shit, and kept giving us examples from other countries, so we just got the translated-on-paper cliffs notes versions. Maybe if we actually got to watch the stuff, it might have been more fun, but it was just crap."

Loki laughed at her outburst, and immediately tried to stop before she directed all that pent-up anger at him. Instead, she surprised him and laughed as well.

"Seriously, it was so fucking dumb," she said.

"Are you returning to university after the summer?" asked Loki, not sure what he wanted the answer to be. If she knew Thor through school, she would make a convenient spy, but the summer holidays had only just started.

"Why, are you firing me?" Darcy asked quickly.

"No," said Loki.

Darcy shrugged. "I don't know. Probably not. I kind of flunked out. I can enrol next year, but I'll be on academic probation, and I'd have to pay more because I lost one of my grants."

"Do you want to go back?" asked Loki.

It was a few moments before Darcy answered. "No," she said calmly. "I really don't. I was only going to college because my mom said it's what I should be doing, and I hated every minute of it. And she was so pissed off when I told her I flunked out, but she couldn't even drive into town from fucking Green Valley to yell at me face to face, so whatever." Darcy looked over to Loki and shook her head. "Sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

Loki almost resisted the temptation to take advantage of the situation, but it was far too easy to take the invitation Darcy didn't even realise she was offering.

"Because you're angry," he said with a shrug. "You spent so much time and money trying to please someone who was more concerned about how you'd make the family look than how you felt about everything." He looked down at the phone, watching the travelling blue dot creep across the map. "And now you're doing what you want to do, and probably wondering if it's the right thing, or if she was right all along, and trying to tell yourself that you might not be as happy as you really are."

There was a long silence in the car as they both concentrated far too much on their tasks. Loki wanted to look up to see if what he'd said had had any effect on Darcy, but he kept his eyes down until she finally spoke.

"So what's your deal, then?" she asked.

"There was a big scandal, about ten years ago," Loki said. "My brother went on television and said some things he shouldn't have and almost cost our father the re-election. Even after he left, our father still favoured him, because the idea of me performing in a bar four nights a week was too embarrassing for him to acknowledge."

"Oh," said Darcy quietly. She looked over at him again a few seconds later, confused. "I thought you said you're English."

"I am. Technically. I was born in Reykjavík, so really I'm both. But I was adopted when I was three," Loki said. "Which is probably why Thor was always the favourite." It came out more bitterly than he'd meant it to.

"Sorry," Darcy said.

Loki shrugged and looked out the window at the landscape that had become flat and boring again. "I didn't find out suddenly, or anything like that. I've always known I was adopted. I remember being taken out of my home and given to a new family. My birth father was, well. He was a cunt, and that's all I do remember about him. I think I was just so worried my new family would start smacking me around as well that I didn't realise until after Thor left that I was always getting second-best treatment."

"That's really terrible," Darcy said.

Loki shrugged again. "That's why I finally left," he said, watching her reaction carefully.

"You came all the way out here to start over?" she asked.

"Something like that." Up ahead, he could see the early signs of civilisation. "Is this us?" he asked.

Darcy jumped on the change of subject. "Yeah, I think so. Where do I turn?"

"Uh." Loki tried to zoom out on the map without closing or breaking anything. He hated touch screen phones, and would have preferred to carry around a big, bulky laptop if it meant being able to always click on what he actually wanted to click on.

He managed to guide her through the small town, keeping the little blue dot on the little blue line that tracked their path. They finally found the house on the corner of California and Wyoming, which was one of the more confusing set of directions Loki had ever had to give in his life. The front yard wasn't a yard at all, but instead a small lot full of little brown rocks and some tall cacti. In front of the house sat the black BMW, looking a little more weather-damaged than it had appeared in the picture on Craigslist. Or maybe that was just because a three-inch-screen was a terrible size to be looking at anything on.

"Okay," Darcy said, parking on the side of the road and stopping the engine. "Let's go get you a car so you can stop spending all your money on cabs."


	14. Chapter 14

Darcy was glad Loki was following behind her on the drive back into Las Vegas. She needed time to think, away from him. When Loki had said that he wanted them to get to know one another, she was pretty sure he hadn't meant like that. That was getting to know a little too much. It was such a weird conversation, Darcy wasn't even sure if she wanted to believe everything he'd said.

When she first got the job with him, she tried to Google him, but wasn't able to find much more than a few YouTube videos. Everything else had been pages for some Icelandic cafe, and some Icelandic volcano, or else pages and pages of ancient mythology.

It would have probably been easier if she'd known his last name, but he never gave it out, and she'd never asked.

She checked her mirror every few miles, making sure Loki was still behind her. After she got off the freeway, she couldn't find him behind her at all, but assumed he'd probably fallen behind under the airport. Assuming he'd be able to find his way back, she drove to the hotel and waited in the parking lot for him to catch up. Instead of any catching up happening, her phone rang after about ten minutes.

"Where are you?" she asked.

There was an awkward pause. "I don't know," Loki said. "Why did you leave me again?"

"I got off at the airport. Where are you?" Darcy asked. She sat up and looked out the windows, scanning the cars going by for any peeling black BMWs.

"I don't know. I'm still on the motorway," Loki said.

Darcy shook her head. "Take the next exit and tell me what it is," she said.

Loki went silent for a few minutes. "Sahara," he announced finally.

"Oh my god," Darcy muttered. How the hell did he get so far away? "Okay, take a right and head east down Saraha. And now tell me the first light to come to," she said. She sat back in her seat and tried not to laugh.

"Don't laugh at me," Loki said. "I'm lost and I'm not from this country and your intersections are all a mile apart—wait, what was that?"

Darcy laughed out loud. "I don't fucking know. What was it?"

"I don't know!" Loki snapped.

"Calm down, cranky pants," Darcy said, trying not to so obviously laugh at him. "Just get in the right lane and slow down."

There was another pause. "Emergency signal," Loki said.

"What?" asked Darcy.

"That's what the traffic light said. Emergency signal," Loki told her.

Darcy shook her head. "Ignore it. You want an actual intersection."

"Oh, here's one. Uh. Town Center Drive?" Loki asked.

Darcy had never heard of it. "No idea if that goes through. Keep going," she told him.

Loki went quiet again, and Darcy pictured him scrunched up against the steering wheel, trying to look at street signs while he drove ten miles an hour. She laughed again, but clamped down on it quickly.

"Intersection, but it doesn't have a light," Loki announced.

"Skip it," Darcy told him. "You want something that goes all the way through, so you don't get even more lost."

Loki hummed irritably. "Okay, here's that devil word one. Hoo-whatever."

"Take a right," Darcy told him quickly, before he passed it.

"This is not how I pictured Las Vegas," Loki said after a few moments. "It's so… green."

Darcy laughed again. "Okay, now just keep going until you hit Flamingo, and take a left. If you get lost again, buy a GPS."

She hung up as he shouted at her down the line. With the radio and AC on, she leaned back in her seat with Angry Birds on her iPhone and waited for Loki. Twenty minutes later, Loki pulled up beside her and screeched to a halt. He got out of the car, holding his arms up in exasperation. "Why are you such a bitch?" he demanded.

Darcy rolled her window down. "Why are you calling me a bitch, jackass?" she asked.

Loki walked over to her window, all full of the same indignant rage from the night before. "You left me. Again," he said.

"You're the one who can't follow someone on the freeway. And your phone has turn by turn directions. They all do. Learn to use it," Darcy said.

"I've never needed to use it before," Loki said, as if it mattered.

"Okay, uh." Darcy turned down her radio and locked her phone. "You just called me because you were lost. You would have wound up in fucking New Mexico on your own. You need it." She turned the radio back up and adjusted her seat to be more comfortable for driving.

"Where are you going?" asked Loki.

Darcy looked up at him, wondering how he ever survived on his own. "You still owe me lunch, and I am collecting. Get in, unless you want to drive."

Loki gaped at her and shook his head. She kind of liked seeing him confused like that, and decided immediately that it needed to happen more often. And then she felt a little bad about it, but not bad enough to stop enjoying his confusion. Before he could say anything else, she reached over and opened the passenger side door.

"Get in, come on," she said.

Loki finally walked around to the other side of the car and got into the passenger seat. Darcy watched him struggle to keep his calm as he fastened his seatbelt. "Where are we going?" he asked.

Darcy shrugged. "Dunno. Do you still want to look for an apartment?" she asked.

"After we get paid," Loki decided. He leaned against the door as Darcy pulled back out onto Flamingo, heading out toward Maryland. "I still need to have more stuff shipped over before next month."

"Okay." She turned left on Maryland, knowing exactly where she wanted to go for lunch. With their detour to Boulder City, and then Loki's detour to Summerlin, it was late enough in the day for Monta to be open. They rode in silence down to Twain, Loki being more preoccupied by what went by his window than anything else.

"I had no idea this was actually a city," he said. "What else are the Americans hiding?"

Darcy laughed. "Most Americans don't even realise that Las Vegas is a city," she said.

The bewildered look on his face as they drove back toward the Strip was almost comical. Worse, it made the bastard a little more human than Darcy really wanted him to be.

"So, why did you come here if you didn't know anything about this place?" she asked.

Loki looked back over to her and shrugged. "I'd wanted to get out of Reykjavík for a while. I heard about the audition here and thought it seemed like a good opportunity," he said.

It sounded like a huge gamble to Darcy.

"What was your back up plan?" she asked.

Loki laughed, high-pitched and without mirth. "Beg my father to pay for a return ticket so I could go home," he said. He looked back out the window again and started to look a little worried. "I'm still waiting for him to find out I left."

Something about the way he said it made Darcy laugh. "He doesn't know?"

"I don't know," said Loki. "I'm assuming not, because he hasn't sent anyone after me."

"Oh my god," Darcy laughed. "How old are you, anyway?"

Loki looked away from the tall buildings that lined what had now become Spring Mountain, as they got closer to the Strip. "Why?" he asked.

Darcy shrugged. "I don't know. I'm curious? We're supposed to be getting to know one another, remember?"

Loki scowled at her and looked away again, suddenly finding the mirror in the sun visor and finding it interesting. "Twenty-eight. How old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-two." She looked over at him, not sure how much she believed his answer. "I thought you'd be older," she said.

"Now what's that supposed to mean?" Loki asked, scandalised.

Darcy shrugged again. "I don't know. You seem older than that to me." She remembered everything else he'd said, on their drive out to Boulder City. "So you were eighteen when your brother took off?" she asked.

Loki didn't answer, which was answer enough. It was no wonder he was so messed up, Darcy realised. Part of her wondered if that's what she could expect from herself in six years. The rest of her pointed out how stupid that was, because even though she and her mother didn't get along, the circumstances were nothing similar.

And a tiny but insistent part of her suggested that Loki's story was just bullshit, because it was just a little too insane to be true. Darcy did her best to ignore that part until she could do some serious Googling in the privacy of her own home.

"So," said Loki suddenly. "How did you get into magic?"

His question made Darcy smile. "My Grandma took me to see Siegfried and Roy when I was like, five. Way before Roy got eaten. And it was just the coolest thing I'd ever seen, you know? Like, I was five years old, and I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up," she said.

"You got to see Siegfried and Roy?" Loki asked jealously.

"Yeah, I know right?" Even though she barely remembered the show, and never got the chance to see them again before Roy's accident, she was still very pleased with the fact that she'd got to see them live. "I cried when that happened, though. Like, I thought the world was gonna end. It messed me up for a while. I remember coming home from school the day after and turning on the TV, and the local news was talking about it."

"Where was I?" Loki wondered aloud. "I think I was skipping school, because I was hungover."

The image of a seventeen-year-old Loki trying to avoid getting into trouble for being drunk was just a little too much for Darcy to handle. "I bet you're cute when you're hungover," she said.

"No," said Loki.

Darcy pulled into the parking lot for a small strip mall, having to park in front of the little printing shop, because the restaurant was busy as hell, like always.

"What is this place?" Loki asked as they got out of the car. He looked up at the line outside the front door and glared at it.

"Ramen," said Darcy. She locked up the car and went to go secure their place in line before another giant family arrived for lunch.

Loki seemed less than pleased. "The stuff you make in the microwave?" he asked.

"No. Real Japanese ramen, made by real Japanese people. It's fucking delicious," Darcy said. She only went there a few times a year though, because after eating the kind of ramen you make in the microwave on a regular basis, she got kind of sick of any ramen before too long.

"There's a line," Loki said, not stepping anywhere near it.

"I see that," said Darcy. "It's this or Domino's. Take your pick."

Loki scowled even more. "I hate Domino's. I am not eating Domino's."

"How do you know?" asked Darcy.

Loki gave her a flat, unimpressed look. "We have Domino's in Iceland. And it's disgusting."

It wasn't the answer Darcy had expected, but she wasn't sure why. "Seriously?" she asked.

"Yes. We get your terrible food and your terrible music," Loki said. He finally stepped up onto the sidewalk to join the rest of the line, but probably only because there was shade there. "How long is the wait going to be?"

Darcy looked up the length of the line. "I don't know. Half hour, maybe?" she guessed.

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes. "Why do you have to wait for everything here?" he asked.

"Only the good stuff," Darcy told him.

The older couple in front of them both turned back to look at them. Darcy smiled and shrugged. She and Loki were the only white people in the entire line, and now they were also the centre of attention.

"He's cranky if he doesn't get his lunch early enough," Darcy told the couple in front of her.

"Does he ever get his lunch early enough?" the woman asked.

Darcy laughed. "No," she said.

Loki rolled his eyes again and turned away. By the time it was their turn to be seated, Loki had wandered away completely, leaving Darcy alone. By then, she was starving and had no idea where Loki had gone, or why he had gone, but she figured he'd probably either find his own way back or call her in a panic again. She felt bad about taking a table for one, and ate quickly to make up for it. When she got back out to her car, she found Loki sitting outside on one of the benches with a McDonald's bag next to him.

"Seriously?" she asked. "You couldn't fucking wait in a line, so you walked to McDonald's?"

Loki looked up at her, looking more than a little sick. "I regret it," he said.

"Yeah, I bet you do," Darcy said. She tried not to laugh as she unlocked the car to let him in. "Oh my god, what is wrong with you?"

Loki practically melted into the seat, leaning back against it and looking up at the ceiling. Darcy turned on the AC to as high as it would go and let Loki cool down before she started driving and made him carsick on top of everything else.

"I want to go home," Loki grumbled.

"Home home, or hotel home?" asked Darcy, not sure if it was a legitimate request, or empty whining.

"Hotel home," Loki said.

"Okay." Darcy pulled back out onto Spring Mountain and pulled into the far right lane as she cut across traffic. "You really can't just wander off like that out here. It's not even hot yet, and you can get really sick from walking around outside for too long."

"It's hot. It's very hot. What are you talking about?" Loki asked.

Darcy shook her head. "Just wait until you experience a hundred and ten," she said.

Loki groaned again and covered his face with his hands. "I hate it here."

The rest of the ride back to the casino was quiet. Darcy had planned on just dropping Loki off in the parking lot and going home, but when she stopped by the stage door, he hardly seemed to notice.

"Are you all right?" she asked as she killed the engine.

"No," Loki said.

Every AC vent in the car was pointed straight at his face, and he still looked like he was going to throw up. His fast food lunch probably wasn't helping either.

"Okay, come on," she said. She got out of the car and walked around to open Loki's door.

It was a few long moments before he noticed at all. When he finally did, he looked up at her tiredly and hauled himself to his feet. "I need to lie down," he said.

"Yeah, you do," Darcy agreed. She unlocked the stage door and walked with Loki inside, in case he passed out and fell over. There was a couch in the green room, but it didn't seem like the best place to leave him, so she led him out to the hall. "Where's your room?" she asked.

Loki looked around like he didn't quite recognise anything. Finally, he nodded down the hall to the left, and led the way to what Darcy hoped were the rooms. Luckily, the Key Largo wasn't a sprawling Strip casino, and had hallways that all led to somewhere logical.

Loki's room was up on the third and highest floor of the hotel, overlooking the pool. Darcy helped him in and let him collapse on the bed while she looked around the suite. It was bigger than she expected it to be, but still on the small side, as far as suites went. One bed, a separate kitchenette with a microwave and a binder full of laminated menus, and a surprisingly large bathroom, but that was about it. There was a small balcony out the sliding glass doors that faced the pool. Darcy was tempted to go stand outside to see the view, but she pulled the blackout curtains shut instead and turned on the air conditioner under the window.

"You okay?" she asked.

Loki was lying face down on the bed, and grumbled into his pillow. That probably meant he was fine.

Darcy started to make her way over to him to make sure he wasn't going to choke on his own hair or something, when she saw a stack of papers on the dresser by the door. She looked over at it, but went to Loki instead.

"I'm gonna go, okay. Call me if you feel like you're getting worse," she said.

Loki grumbled into his pillow again. He might have been telling Darcy to go away, so she figured she'd listen to him. On her way out the door, she stopped just long enough to steal a glance down at the contract Loki had signed with the hotel. His full name was right there on top, and Darcy silently repeated his last name to keep from forgetting it. She finally had a name to Google. Loki Odinson.

She drove home and quickly ran up to her apartment, repeating his name over and over to herself. As soon as she was inside, she powered up her laptop and waited for it to take it's sweet time to get going. As soon as Chrome came up, she put Loki's name into the search bar, and immediately got a page of relevant results, instead of a bunch of random junk. She clicked on his Facebook page, which was impossible to read, but seemed to be maintained primarily to promote his show back in Iceland. She assumed that what was written on the posts was Icelandic, and not just a bunch of keymashes with funny symbols, even though funny symbol keymashes was what it seriously looked like.

Darcy clicked into the photo albums, going through all of the pictures one at a time. A lot of them were backstage sorts of pictures, with Loki posing with fans and getting drunk after shows. He was with a tall blonde woman in a lot of them - his former assistant, Darcy assumed. The pictures that were from the actual shows were all presented without any context, making Darcy wonder if his arm was supposed to be on fire and if the angry raven was part of the show or if it had actually escaped. There was a video as well, and for the first few seconds, Darcy was surprised that it was in English. But he had said that he'd based his entire show off of being English, so that at least had not been a lie.

The video was a two-minute clip of Loki messing around with a sword. He pulled someone up from the audience in the small club and gave the guy the sword, telling him to make sure it was a real sword. The guy didn't seem to know what to do with it, and started swinging it around a little drunkenly, so Loki took it away again. He told the guy that he'd been wrong about the sword, and that it wasn't a sword at all. The video quality was too poor to see exactly what Loki had done, but with a twist and a flourish, the sword became two.

They weren't the same swords Darcy was using for their box jumper. Darcy wasn't sure what their deal was until Loki stacked them together, and without any warning, easily swallowed them both at once. Just watching it made Darcy's gag reflex flare up in sympathy. When Loki pulled both swords out of his mouth again, holding one in each hand, he took a deep bow and then turned to the man he'd brought up from the audience. He tried to give the guy one of the swords as a souvenir, but the guy shook his head and backed off warily.

Part of Darcy hoped that routine would make it into their show, just so she could use it as an excuse to learn how to swallow swords. Especially since Loki had already promised to teach her how to eat fire once everything was settled in with the show.

Darcy went back to Google and scrolled through the results, trying to remember the name Loki gave for his brother, but all she could remember was Sven. On a whim, she searched Loki's name again, telling Google to only query CNN's site. She got two whole results from the search, and when she clicked on the first link, it was an archived page with no images. It was a short article about Iceland's political upset after the son of the President of Iceland appeared drunk on television and made a massive jackass of himself.

Surprisingly, Loki was mentioned down toward the bottom, as if the President thought that he could avoid being called a xenophobic lunatic as well if he made sure everyone knew he had a younger son who was adopted from immigrant parents.

Most surprisingly was that everything Loki had told her in the car was true, according to CNN. Looking at the page on her browser, Darcy started to feel bad about not trusting him in the first place. Just with the way the article was structured, she could even see how he might have been given the impression that he wasn't as important as his brother. Add in a completely unprofessional sort of career choice on top of it all, when everyone else in his family had gone into politics, and it was no wonder Loki hated everything around him.

Darcy closed out of the browser so she didn't have to look at the article any longer and picked up her phone. She felt like she should call him or something, but she had no idea what she'd say. And he was sick in bed and probably wanting to die.

Instead of phoning Loki, she dialled the only other person she thought could help. She expected to get his voicemail, but when Fischer actually answered, Darcy was almost startled into dropping her phone.

"Hey, uh. I didn't know who else to call. I just took Loki back to his room, but you might want to send someone up there to make sure he isn't dying or something. I don't think he has heatstroke, but he was pretty sick," Darcy said.

"Oh, jeez. Okay, yeah. Thanks for letting me know," Fischer said, shuffling something around as he spoke.

"Yeah, no problem," Darcy said. She hung up and looked down at her phone, not sure what she was supposed to do next.


	15. Chapter 15

Loki had slept all he could possibly sleep, and was wide awake by 3am. He'd been getting pretty good at adjusting to the new time zone, but now he knew he was right back to where he'd started, backwards from everybody else.

He opened up the heavy curtain to the balcony and took a step back from the solid sheet of rain that fell from the sky. A streak of lightning lit up the sky with a clap of thunder so loud, the entire building rattled. Loki jumped back away from the window in case anything broke or exploded, but everything held firm. Keeping his distance all the same, he watched while lightning lit up the city like a strobe light, one bolt after the next. Then, almost like someone had turned off a tap, the rain all but stopped, and the sky calmed and darkened. Curious, and maybe a little bit stupid, Loki slid open the door to the balcony and stepped outside. Everything smelled of wet dirt and leaves, in complete incongruity to everything he thought he knew about Las Vegas. Somewhere nearby, a flock of ducks were quacking and squabbling in the aftermath of the storm, because apparently there were ducks out in the desert that weren't already on a stage or in a Chinese restaurant somewhere.

Loki watched the city from his balcony for a long while, as rain water dripped off the trees and into the pool. His room faced the Strip, and from where he stood, he could see the low clouds blazing in neon colours as they crawled across the tops of the towering casinos several miles away. Every colour of the Boulevard reflected off the clouds, making everything seem even brighter than usual. On the road somewhere to his right, Loki could hear a truck rumbling down the otherwise quiet road, kicking up spray under its tyres. Apparently even Las Vegas slept at three in the morning, because everything else was quiet. Even the criminals had all apparently gone inside, because there weren't even any distant sirens.

But it gave Loki an idea. He stepped back inside and closed the balcony door, just in case it rained again, and quickly changed into a clean shirt. Making sure he had everything, he left the room and went back out to the peeling BMW he'd bought the day before. It cost more than he wanted to spend, but he needed it. He couldn't walk everywhere, and the buses were confusing and apparently took some card he didn't know how to get and didn't care enough about to research.

In the driver's seat, Loki pulled out his phone and tried to find the GPS Darcy had insulted him over. He hated his phone, and everything it did. He hated that every aspect of life revolved around a person's phone, and actively resisted learning how to use the damn thing properly just out of spite. But he'd lived in Reykjavík all his life, and had never needed GPS to get around. Now, it was admit he had one and needed it, or die. Possibly literally.

The GPS turned out to be Google Maps, which Loki wasn't so sure about. Gritting his teeth and pretending the task was more difficult than it truly was, Loki got his phone to lock into his current location, and set it as his home. With the address stored, he locked his phone, started the car, and headed out east on Flamingo.

He didn't know where he was going, which was the entire point. With so few people on the roads, he was able to drive a bit more slowly so he could see street signs as he came to them. He took random turns, sometimes finding himself in quiet suburban neighbourhoods, only to be driving past a casino several minutes later. He was surprised at one point to come across signs advertising a zoo, and couldn't imagine the poor polar bears and penguins out in this abysmal heat all the time. Even in the dead of night, it was still warm and sticky, though finally cool enough that having the windows rolled down didn't blast a constant wall of hot air in his face.

Loki explored the city as the sun slowly rose, and with it the traffic gradually increased. At 6am, he stopped off at a petrol station with a green dinosaur on the sign and filled up his tank, while getting his phone to pull up directions to get him back to the casino. Before they left Boulder City, Darcy had told him where to go to get the car registered to his name, with the explicit instructions to get there no later than 7am. Except she had only told him how to get there from the casino, and he didn't know the address or the name the Americans gave it.

The singularly nice thing about America so far had been how the roads were almost all in a perfect grid. Even though he'd managed to wander to the other side of town, he only had to make two turns before he was back on Flamingo, heading to the casino. Instead of stopping when he got to it, he kept going, past the Boulevard and to the west side of town, where he eventually found whatever the Americans called their version of the Register of Vehicles. Even before he found a parking spot, he could see a queue forming by the door. It was only about ten people, but he saw what Darcy had meant about being stuck there all day if he didn't get in early enough. He parked, and with all of his documents in-hand, he went to go stand in the queue before anyone else got there. Suddenly, small though it was, he dearly missed his celebrity status back home.

It was almost midday by the time he finally got out of there with everything registered and signed off as it should have been. What should have been a simple process had turned into a nightmare, and now he was very late, though he had at least managed not to strangle or shove anyone through the entire ordeal. He tried to speed down Flamingo without actually speeding, swearing and shouting at every other motorist and red light on the road. When he finally pulled into the Key Largo's car park, there were several other cars there already, confirming that Loki was very late indeed. He rushed into the green room, finding it full of photography equipment and people he didn't know.

"There you are," Darcy said, trying to turn away while a young man with bottle blond hair did her make up.

"Did you know you can't register a car without a Nevada driving license?" asked Loki as he ran back to the dressing room.

As the door swung shut, he could hear Darcy laughing and calling him names, but he ignored it and got dressed as quickly as he could. He pulled his hair back into a tail, but as soon as he stepped back into the green room, one of the men there with the photographer sat him down in a chair and pulled his hair back out.

"What? It was fine," he said.

"Not really," the stylist said. He smeared something thick in Loki's hair and brushed it all back out again. "Your hair is a mess."

Loki snorted. "I didn't expect to be waiting in a queue for almost six hours. I thought I'd at least have time to shower before coming to do this."

Darcy laughed again. "Why did you do it today?" she asked.

Loki closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying not to shout at everyone in the room. "You told me to do it as soon as possible," he said with a forced calm.

"I also said you'd be there all day. You knew we were doing this. It could have waited another day," Darcy said.

"Stop talking," Loki told her.

"I thought your visa was all fucked up anyway," Darcy said. She looked over at him almost suspiciously. "How'd you even get through the DMV? I thought they arrest and deport on sight."

Loki shook his head, upsetting the man who was trying to fix his hair. "No, I got it fixed. I'm allowed to be here." He reached for his wallet so he could wave his cheap, temporary driving license in her face, but he'd left it in his other trousers when he'd changed.

He settled down and sat still while too much makeup was smeared on his face, making him feel like he was going to suffocate.

"Wow, you've actually got some colour in your cheeks. Fake color, but still," Darcy said while the stylist did everything in his power to make it look like Loki had had a chance to shave.

"I told you to stop talking," he said.

The stylist finally finished, muttering something about airbrushes as he walked away. Loki stood up and looked over at Darcy, wondering how women managed to wear makeup without looking like clowns. As her makeup artist finished, Darcy slid her ugly plastic glasses back onto her face and stood up carefully, brushing her hair back over her shoulders.

"Take them off," Loki said, annoyed at having to tell her at all.

Darcy looked down at her shoes - the same ones she'd worn to her initial fitting - and started to argue.

"The glasses," Loki said before she got the first full word out. "I told you, you need to get contacts."

"And go blind from eyeball-eating bacteria? Gross, no," Darcy said.

She took off her glasses anyway and set them down on the table next to the sofa. In her ridiculously tall shoes, she looked like she was about to fall over at the slightest gust of wind, but Loki knew he didn't have time to pick any more fights. Especially since he'd already told her she could wear them.

"Where are we set up?" he asked.

"On the stage," Darcy said. She started to walk out of the green room with surprising grace, despite the fuss she'd put up about the three seconds of running she had to do, but stopped suddenly and turned back round to face Loki.

"Hey, do you know if Clint's in today? I have something for him in my car," she said.

Loki wasn't sure if he was the one being addressed. "Clint?" he asked.

Darcy's eyes grew wide and her jaw dropped. "Seriously?" she asked. "The guy you're always bossing around to find things at the last fucking minute, even though it's way not his job?"

Loki wracked his brain, trying to figure out who Darcy was talking about. "The security guard?" he asked. He was always hovering around, making himself convenient.

Darcy laughed quietly. "Oh my god. Yes," she said.

"Clint? Really?" asked Loki. "What a terrible name. It almost sounds like-"

"And I'm sure he's heard it from better assholes than you," Darcy said. She shook her head and started walking out toward the stage. "Is he here today?" she asked as she left.

"How should I know?" Loki shouted back. He turned back to get a bottle of water from the fridge and almost ran into a man with his phone in his hand. "Who are you, now?" Loki asked.

The little man in blue jeans and a brown suit jacket smiled wanly. "Phil, from What's On. We were supposed to meet at ten this morning," he said.

Loki cringed as he grabbed his water and made long strides toward the stage. "Yes, sorry. I was stuck in a line all morning," he said.

"I heard," said Phil, following close behind. "That DMV can be a real nightmare. What was the problem with your visa?"

Loki looked back at the phone in Phil's hand, knowing that he was being recorded.

"Nothing. Bureaucracy. It's fixed now," he insisted. He mentioned nothing of the fact that he hadn't even applied until after he got to the country. He was just lucky that Fischer was willing to throw money at it to make the problem go away.

The stage had been lit up with about a dozen portable lights, while someone hung a slate-coloured backdrop from the fly system. Loki walked along the edge of the stage and stepped down into the house to get out of everyone's way, annoyed that Phil was still following him.

"Why Las Vegas?" Phil asked, still holding his phone up.

Loki shrugged. He wasn't in the mood to give an interview after the morning he'd had, but it was time to drop into character all the same. "There's only so far you can go performing in bars four nights a week. I saw an opportunity here and decided to take it," he said.

"And you're from Iceland, correct?" Phil asked.

Loki sat down to get comfortable while he waited, and gestured for Phil to do the same.

"Reykjavík, yes," he said. "And for the purposes of my act, I sound like it." He knew what the reporter was about to ask next, and was ready to call the whole interview off.

But to his surprise, Phil nodded and changed directions. "Tell me about your act."

Loki started to answer, but before he could, Darcy started shouting at him. "Hey, they want to get started. You kinda need to be here for it!"

Loki looked over at Phil and got to his feet. "Sorry. We're having a press show on the twenty-fifth."

Phil nodded. "I'll be there," he said.

"Good. We'll sit down and talk properly then," said Loki. He left Phil behind and jogged up to the stage where Darcy was already waiting with the photographer and her crew.

"Have you ever done a photo shoot like this before?" the photographer asked.

Loki and Darcy both shook their heads. "No," said Loki.

The photographer nodded. "Okay, here's how it goes. We'll take some shots that can go to print, and some that our effects artists will manipulate. I don't know which ones the article will use in the end, but they tend to use a mix of both."

Loki was still stuck on the first part. "Manipulate?" he asked. He looked over to Darcy, but she didn't seem to have any answers.

"Yeah," said the photographer. "It's as much a promotional spread as it is an interview. We want to advertise that it's a magic show to the people who don't have time to read the article, and to do that, we have to create the illusions on the page."

Loki frowned. "I don't use any kind of camera tricks in my act. I don't have any cameras at all in my act," he argued. Using Photoshop to cheat the effects felt almost dirty, and he wasn't sure he wanted any part in it. Dirty in a way that made deceiving entire crowds feel innocent.

"No, Loki," Darcy said quickly. "You really need to do the tourist thing. That's how all the acts advertise. Most of the people just pick up the magazine and look at the pictures while they're waiting for their table at a restaurant. Just let these people do the jobs they've been doing for years, because they're the ones selling the show."

Loki frowned, but decided against arguing. They still had to get through rehearsal for the day, to make up for the lost time from the day before, so he threw his hands up in defeat and stepped up onto the stage.

The photographer had a solid idea of what she wanted before they even started, and directed Loki and Darcy with the authority of a woman who wasn't going to be argued with. Loki was starting to get sick of being bossed around by women, but he managed to hold his tongue all through being told where to stand and how to sit. But every time he looked over at Darcy, she seemed to be loving the whole thing. She took every order with grace, grinning almost stupidly the entire time.

"Why don't you listen to me like this when I ask you to do something?" Loki asked as he was handed a top hat that would never make it into his show in a million years.

Darcy didn't let her smile fade for a second. "Because you don't ask. You demand. And I only say no when your demands become dangerous anyway."

She was handed a small, white rabbit while one of the photographer's assistants set up a small table full of random props from backstage, which had nothing at all to do with a rabbit pull.

"What's his name?" Darcy asked as she petted the rabbit.

"Wilbur. We use him in all the magic spreads," said the assistant.

"So we don't even get a unique set of faked photographs?" asked Loki.

"Sure you do," said the assistant. "Just not a unique rabbit."

Loki cursed the day as he was directed on how to stand while reaching through a top hat that had no top. He stayed in character for as long as it took to snap the photos, but as soon as the flash bulbs stopped, he fell right back into his sour mood.

"What's the weight limit on the rigging?" the photographer asked while all the props were set aside again.

Loki looked up at the fly system, having a good idea of what they wanted to do. "I have no idea," he lied.


	16. Chapter 16

It was a last minute decision. Darcy wasn't even sure if it was going to work, but she hadn't had a day off since she took Loki to Boulder City, and she needed one. Loki may have been a robot, but Darcy needed dark days, even if it meant she had to show up at his door and demand one.

She let herself in through the green room and followed the corridor around to the guest elevators. She only vaguely remembered which room Loki was in, finding it only because he'd actually hung a 'do not disturb' sign on the door handle. Darcy listened through the door for a few seconds, able to hear him moving around on the other side. Taking that to mean he was already awake, she knocked on the door and put on her happy face. It was not a face matched by Loki when he answered.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

Darcy kept grinning. "It's been two weeks since we had a day off. We're taking one," she declared.

Loki glared at her. "Like hell we are. Your quick changes are still sloppy."

"Because I'm tired from working twelve hours a day without any rest at all," Darcy argued. She pointed into Loki's room and waved around vaguely. "Get your shoes. I have a surprise for you."

Loki stared at her, unbudging.

"Come on. You'll like it. Unless you actually have no soul." She waved back into the room, trying to make Loki move faster. Or at all.

She eventually won the staring contest, with Loki forfeiting by grabbing his shoes from beside the bed. He put them on like it was the most difficult task in the world, and finally followed her out to the hall.

"You might want a camera," Darcy said.

Loki didn't seem like he believed her.

"I have my phone," he said.

Darcy laughed, having a suspicion that she'd have to show him how to use it, and started walking back down to the elevator.

"How long will this take?" Loki asked as he followed after her.

Darcy called the elevator, which hadn't gone anywhere since she'd got off it. "Until I see you smile," she said.

Loki followed her inside with the blankest blank expression on his face that Darcy had ever seen.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"The happiest place in the whole valley," Darcy said. She wasn't going to tell him any more than that, because she was pretty sure he'd refuse to go if he knew any more than that.

Still, Loki followed her back down to the green room, pausing only to feed the fish before going outside with Darcy. She unlocked the car for him and laughed to herself when he was stalled from getting in by the bag of carrots on his seat.

"What's this?" he asked, holding the cheap plastic bag up dubiously.

Darcy grinned at him. "Munchies," she answered.

Loki gave her an uncertain look as he slid into the seat, which was probably permanently broken from how far back he kept trying to slide it. Darcy waited for him to buckle up and get settled before handing him her phone, ignoring him once again trying to push the seat back farther than it could possibly go.

"Here. You can even pick the music," she said. She had a fresh install of Spotify opened on her phone, with paid time bought just to give Loki one less thing to complain about.

He found the cord sticking out from the stereo and plugged it into the phone, apparently knowing a little more about personal electronics than he let on. While he poked around for something to listen to, Darcy started up the car and pulled back out onto Flamingo. By the he found something that sounded like the Swedish Chef had taken up a new career, they were under the airport, and killing the 3G signal. Loki frowned down at the phone and tapped the screen again.

"I'm putting this in offline mode," he said.

Darcy glanced over, wondering what the hell he was doing to her phone. "How does that work with internet radio?" she asked.

"It doesn't. I found one of my playlists on the public lists." He put the phone down in the cup holder and turned up the volume as they came out of the tunnel and merged onto the beltway.

Darcy scoffed and shook her head. "I am so sick of men pretending to be stupid. You know what you're doing. You just want everyone to do everything for you."

"That's not true," argued Loki. "I just hate touch screens."

He tensed up again as they got off the beltway and onto the Fifteen. Darcy laughed, staying in the far right lane and not even having to fight traffic to get off at the very next exit. Once they were off the freeway, Loki relaxed again and looked out the window at the passing city. Pretty soon, the Swedish Chef was replaced by screaming and heavy drums, and what sounded like some kind of flute. For a second, Darcy thought it was a mistake until she looked over at Loki, with his long black hair and plain black T-shirt.

"Oh my god," she said laughing loudly. "You're a closet metalhead."

Loki looked over at her with a dissatisfied frown. "There's nothing closeted about me," he said.

Darcy laughed at the mental image of him all covered in black leather and metal spikes, until her mind caught up with what he'd said. "Wait? Really?" she asked.

He arched an eyebrow at her and shrugged.

"Oh," said Darcy quietly.

Shops became neighbourhoods broken up by big patches of sand, and then big patches of sand broken up by neighbourhoods.

"Where are we going?" Loki asked as they left civilisation behind and travelled further into the desert. He looked out at the mountains and sagebrush, moving around in his seat like he wasn't sure where to look.

"Just a little bit farther," Darcy said. "We're gonna do the whole tourist thing today. Because you have to. It's the law."

"It is not," Loki said, still looking out at the desert. He rolled down his window and pulled his hair away from his face as he leaned into the wind.

"Is so. You have to, or the Vegas Police will arrest you," Darcy told him.

"No they won't," Loki argued. He glanced back over at her suspiciously. "Are there vultures out here?" he asked. He looked up at the sky, almost nervously.

"Oh yeah. But you'd probably get killed by a scorpion before the vultures come after you. So don't get lost," Darcy said.

Loki lifted his feet and checked the footwell, as if he'd find one down there with him. Darcy laughed as she spotted a turnoff up ahead and slowed down.

"Oh, is this us? I think it is," she said. She drove under the big, wooden sign that bridged the road and slowed down to barely a crawl.

"It's a ranch," Loki said, turning around in his seat to see the sign. "Why are we at a ranch?"

"You'll see," said Darcy.

As they drove closer to the painted mountains behind the ranch, Loki's attention again became transfixed on the landscape, but Darcy's attention was on the sides of the road.

"Come on. This is where I was told to go," Darcy muttered as she looked around for any signs of life. She pulled off the main road and into a big, gravel parking lot where a small cluster of cars had gathered under a row of trees.

"Aha!" she shouted as she found a place in the shade.

Loki was too busy watching her and being confused to notice what was going on outside his window.

"What is this? Redneck Lover's Lane? What did you bring me to?" he asked.

Darcy pointed over his shoulder as a large, brown burro shoved its head in through Loki's window. Loki shouted and tried to jump away from the sudden intrusion, but his seatbelt kept him firmly in place.

"Horse-thing," he shouted, trying to back away from it.

Darcy started cackling at the sight of his lanky ass failing to get away. "It's a burro."

Loki didn't seem to care.

"Grab the munchies. He's hungry," Darcy told him.

Loki didn't grab the carrots, so Darcy did. She pulled one out from the bag and wiggled it in front of the burro's nose to get its attention. The burro reached out and grabbed it with its lips, dropping slobbery pieces of carrot into Loki's lap.

Loki groaned loudly and grimaced.

"Oh, it's just donkey spit. You'll be fine," Darcy said. "Here. Give me your hand."

She grabbed Loki's hand and held it out flat, dropping pieces of carrot into it. "Hold your hand up. He'll eat right off it," she said. She tried to nudge Loki's hand toward the window, but he resisted.

"No," he said.

"Wow, you actually have no soul," Darcy said.

Loki grumbled and held his hand up for the burro, cringing away as it ate the carrot pieces off of his hand. "Disgusting."

Darcy stopped paying attention to his unwillingness to have fun and opened her door. "A baby! Look at him!" she cooed. She grabbed another carrot from the bag and took it over to the fuzzy little baby burro that wandered nearby.

"Should we be touching them? They're wild animals," Loki called from the car.

"They're on a ranch. How wild can they be?" asked Darcy. She held out the carrot so the baby could nibble on it, and scratched it between the ears. She didn't even care if Loki was going to be a grump about it; there was a baby burro, and she was determined to pet it. She reached for her phone, forgetting that it was hooked up to her stereo and not in her pocket.

"Bring me my phone," she said. "Please?"

She was surprised when the music from the car quit, and Loki brought her phone out to her. Still petting the baby, she traded off the carrot for her phone. She crouched down in front of the burro, trying to get a good shot of its face while it curiously explored her.

"You're going to get bit," Loki said. "Or kicked. Or stepped on."

"And it'll be worth it," Darcy said.

She snapped off a few pictures and stood back up before any biting or kicking or stepping happened. Loki stood nearby, watching the burros with a wary eye. Eventually, he apparently decided that the baby didn't pose a serious threat, and tried to feed it the rest of the carrot. He leaned away as the baby started munching away, but didn't actually run away or start shouting again.

"You gotta pet him," Darcy said.

Loki leaned over, craning his neck weirdly. "It's a she," he said, standing back up again.

"Really?" asked Darcy.

Loki checked again. "Yep."

"Okay. Well, you still have to pet her," Darcy said, rubbing the burro's neck.

Loki rolled his eyes and reached out to touch the burro's neck as well. "It's softer than I thought it would be," he said, running his hand along the baby's grey hair.

"She still has some of her baby fluff. You should see the really little ones. Fuzzballs with legs," Darcy said.

They stuck around long enough to feed the rest of the carrots to the animals. As they got back into the car, Darcy plugged her phone back in and checked the time. "Oh, we've still got lots of time," she said. She handed the phone over to Loki so he could put his music back on, and started the car.

"Time for what?" asked Loki.

Darcy pulled back out onto the road, still driving slowly so she didn't hit a burro and smash up her car. "I grabbed tickets to the one o'clock Mac King show. I mean, it's probably a good idea to scope out the competition, right?"

Loki shrugged and nodded. After a few moments of silence between them, he looked over at her. "What do you want?" He asked.

Darcy wasn't sure if she should be offended or not. "What do you mean? I don't want anything."

"You're being nice to me," Loki stated flatly. "You're never this nice to me. And since when do you pay for anything?" He was watching her suspiciously, making Darcy wonder if making him take a day off had been the wrong thing to do.

"I already got what I wanted. A day off before we hit serious cram time," Darcy said. "I wanted to go out, see a show, and maybe get a little wasted. I thought you might want to come with."

Loki sat back in his seat, apparently accepting her answer, but it was hard to tell. They rode in silence again as they came up to Red Rock Canyon, the basin spreading out alongside the road like a shallow, prickly bowl.

"What's this?" Loki asked, watching a car turn off to the scenic loop.

"Red Rock," Darcy answered. "Valley of Fire's better, but if you want to blow off the show, we can go check this out instead."

Loki looked out at the mountains and shook his head. "You've already paid for it," he said.

Darcy took the long way back to her apartment, going back on the surface streets, and taking Loki through downtown and Old Vegas. After leaving her car at her building, she led Loki back up to Flamingo to catch the bus to the Strip.

After the show, Darcy led Loki up and down the Strip, insisting on going into every casino along the way. She took him through every mall and stopped at every bar they came across, getting a new drink for Loki to try. Even though he refused to get a margarita in a green, plastic guitar, she did somehow manage to talk him into getting onto the roller coaster at New York. Which, in hindsight, Darcy realised had been a poor choice, and they were probably both lucky neither of them threw up at the corkscrew.

By the time they stumbled out of Bally's, having got completely lost in that maze, the sun had gone down and the Strip was lit up like a tacky neon Christmas tree.

"I should probably get you home," Darcy said, looking out at the massive crowd. "Let's find the bus stop."

Loki didn't say anything, and just let himself be led out to the road while Darcy looked for the sort of crowd that signalled a bus top on the Strip. She found one just as the bus pulled up, letting out roughly half the population of China before letting the same amount of people back on. Darcy showed Loki how to use the ticket he'd been given when they got on, and managed to find two empty seats upstairs, toward the back.

"I'm onto you," Loki muttered.

Darcy looked over, not sure if he was talking to her. He looked kind of droopy, in that early hangover kind of way that suggested they probably should have stopped drinking about three hours earlier.

"What?" she asked.

"You wanted two days off, so you put me in the sun all day and fed me nothing but alcohol and bad nachos," Loki grumbled.

Darcy laughed. "Those nachos were awesome," she said. "And please don't puke on the bus. They'll kick us off."

She hadn't even considered the hangovers, though. Then again, she never did. It was always the fatal flaw in her plans of getting wasted.

"I hate you," Loki grumbled.

Darcy laughed again as the bus started moving with a sharp lurch and a strange squeal. Loki leaned against the window, looking like he was about to start drooling on everything. Which, at almost ten at night on the Flamingo bus, there were probably four other people doing exactly that somewhere in the crowded mess.

Darcy watched the screen that called out the stops, waiting for Claymont to come up. It wasn't until the bus pulled away from Paradise that Darcy realised she'd completely forgotten where they were going.

"Shit, that was your stop," she said, craning around Loki to look out the window.

Loki sat up and tried to look back, frowning. "Why didn't you tell me to get off?" he asked.

"I'm used to getting off later," Darcy argued.

Loki covered his face with one hand and started laughing.

"Oh my god no, shut up," Darcy said.

Loki leaned into the window again and kept laughing, even as Darcy tried to shove him into stopping.

"It wasn't that funny. And you started it," she said.

"Yes it was," said Loki.

It only just occurred to Darcy that Loki was actually laughing. He hadn't even really laughed at the Mac King show, but apparently crude sex jokes were what got him going. Of course they were.

He quieted down just in time for Darcy to reach forward and press the button to call their stop. Darcy had to almost drag him out of his seat to get him going, and made him go down the stairs first so he didn't fall and crush her.

As they got off the bus, Darcy tried to decide the best thing to do. For a brief moment, she considered pointing him in the direction of the hotel and hoping he made it there alive, because she didn't want to walk with him all the way there and back track. As she thought, the westbound bus sped through the intersection, making the idea of waiting for the next one more than a little unappealing. Not sure what else to do, Darcy reached out and slapped the crosswalk signal so she could call him a cab from her place.

She led him across the street and down Cambridge, not expecting him to stop on the bridge. He stepped up onto the lower rung of the rail and leaned over to look at the muck below.

"What are these things?" he asked.

Darcy stopped, not sure if trying to pull him back would just make him fall. "Storm drains," she said. "It floods really bad in the winter sometimes. It was so bad a few years ago, the wall on the other side of the road burst and took out a water main."

Loki stepped back off the rail. "It's a desert. How does it flood?" he asked.

"It floods because it's a desert. The ground's nothing but hard clay. There's nowhere for the water to go," Darcy explained.

She tugged on the hem of Loki's shirt to get him moving again. "I thought the whole point of a desert is that it doesn't rain," Loki said.

"No, it rains. And when it does, it fucks everything up. The snow fucks everything up, the wind fucks everything up. Weather fucks everything up," Darcy lamented. A thought occurred to her, and she slapped the back of her hand against Loki's side to make sure she had his attention. "Which, hey, by the way. You really need to stop wandering off like you do. Especially when it rains."

Loki shrugged. "I'd be less likely to die from heatstroke when it's raining, wouldn't I?" he asked.

"Yeah, and way more likely to drown in quicksand. So don't do it," Darcy told him.

"You are making stuff up now," Loki insisted.

"Am not." Darcy argued. She cut across the parking lot to her building, making sure Loki followed and didn't fall down the stairs or anything. Once in her apartment, she shooed Loki out of the way so she could lock the door and turn on the air conditioner.

Despite the small space of the studio, Loki still managed to wander off.

"Get out of my bedroom," Darcy called out at the sound of the curtain being pulled back.

"You've put your bed in the cupboard," Loki said. He put the curtain back and went into the bathroom instead.

Darcy really hoped he knew how to aim, because she was not looking forward to cleaning up his piss if he didn't. She tried to ignore the thought and grabbed a pot from the cupboard and filled it with water and put it on the stove. Assuming Loki was probably just as starving as she was, Darcy dumped the entire box of spaghetti noodles into the water and pulled a jar of sauce from the shelf.

"Hey, do you like mushrooms?" she called out.

"No!" Loki shouted back.

Darcy frowned at the sauce in her hand and checked the cupboard for anything else, but all she had was two other jars of tomato sauce with mushrooms.

"You'll have to pick them out. Sorry," she said.

Somewhere else in the apartment, Loki grumbled. While the noodles heated up and started to boil, Darcy pulled two of her biggest glasses down from the cupboard and filled them from the water pitcher in the fridge. Loki had wandered back into the main room, and was once again touching stuff Darcy didn't want touched, so she distracted him by handing him the glass of water.

"Drink that," she said. She went back to the kitchen and pulled the jar of hangover aspirin from the drawer, and shook out a few tablets. She gave two of them to Loki, and took the other two herself.

"What's this for?" Loki said, eyeing the tablets dubiously.

"Preemptive hangover strike," Darcy said. She finished off her water and went back to poke at dinner while Loki tried to decide if he trusted the aspirin, or whatever. The way he was stalling, that's what it seemed like he was doing.

Darcy poked at the noodles with a fork, stirring them up whenever it seemed like they were going to start boiling over. When they seemed done enough, she drained the pot and poured the jar of sauce in and stirred it all together before piling heaps of messy pasta into bowls.

"Enjoy," she chirped as she handed Loki his.

He looked down at it and frowned again. If Darcy hadn't been so hungry, she might have taken offense, but Loki hated everything. Even baby burros. Ignoring him, Darcy sat down on the sofa and turned on the TV to see if there was anything worth watching on. She eventually stopped on Adult Swim and grinned at the Venture Brothers repeat.

"Oh, I love this one," she said.

Loki eyed the other end of the small sofa before sitting down. "What is it?" he asked. He poked at his pasta with his fork, like he was expecting something to crawl out of it.

"Hank has to get a job, so he opens a store and sells all his dad's stuff," Darcy told him halfway through a too-big bite.

"No, what is the show?" asked Loki. He finally dared to take a bite, which didn't poison him or bite back.

"Oh. It's kind of making fun of all those old sixties and seventies cartoons, but with love. Johnny Quest and Scooby Doo and all those. It's pretty good." She slurped up more noodles and watched her show over the rim of her bowl, while Loki still treated everything with caution.

"I don't like mushrooms," he said.

"Sorry. It's all I had. Just pick them out," Darcy said.

It had been a mistake, because almost immediately, Loki started picking the tiny little mushroom pieces from his bowl and dropping them into Darcy's.

"Have you called a cab yet?" Darcy asked.

Loki piled a few more mushrooms into her bowl and shook his head. "They don't answer my calls. Henderson or Desert. Or Ace."

Darcy laughed, somehow not surprised to hear that. "Is there anyone you haven't pissed off already?"

"I still have a job," Loki reasoned. He piled one more heap of mushrooms into Darcy's bowl and finally started eating.

Darcy looked down at all the mushrooms Loki dumped onto her pasta and sighed. Mixing it all in, Darcy turned her attention back to her show. They ate mostly in silence as they both slowly started to fall asleep right there as they ate. Darcy finished her dinner as quickly as she could and got up to put everything away before she fell asleep awkwardly. She was going to call a cab for Loki when she was done, but by the time she finished in the kitchen, he had fallen asleep awkwardly on the couch. Darcy tried to wake him, but he just grumbled and swatted at her. Deciding he could stay there since he wasn't hurting anything, Darcy managed to push him over onto his side and turned off the TV and all the lights, and put the air conditioner on the lowest setting.

Looking over at Loki on the sofa, Darcy tried to figure out what to do next. She tended to sleep in just her underwear, if she wore anything at all to bed, but she still wasn't sure how much she trusted Loki. And now, she was letting him sleep on her couch.

She turned on the light above her bed and searched around in her crates for the flannel pyjamas she knew she had somewhere. She eventually found them, suddenly remembering just how pink they were, and grabbed a T-shirt from one of the hangers. She quickly changed in the bathroom, coming back out to find Loki still asleep where she'd left him. Assuming that meant he was actually asleep, Darcy turned out the light and crawled into bed.

When she woke the next morning, she was surprised to find she wasn't alone. Loki was pressed up against the wall with his back toward her, and they were both still clothed, but she had definitely not invited him to her bed.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, poking him in the side.

Loki mumbled something she couldn't understand.

"What?"

Loki repeated himself, following it this time with, "your couch sucks."

Darcy wanted to be annoyed, but she knew he was right. The sofa was fucking terrible, both as a sofa and as a bed. It had looked amazing on Target's website, but it was the last time Darcy ever bought furniture online. There wasn't a single spot on it that didn't have a hard bar just under the cushions.

Darcy started shaking Loki by the shoulder to wake him up. The clock next to the bed claimed the time was just after ten in the morning, but it was clearly lying. Darcy was way too tired for 10am.

"Come on, Drill Sergeant McNasty. Time to go," she said.

Loki grumbled at her some more, but eventually sat up. Darcy could actually see his headache, and sort of felt a little bad for him. He probably had the same headache she had.

"Are you hungry?" Darcy asked.

Loki flopped back down onto the bed. "No, I'm dying. Leave me alone."

Darcy left him to his death and got up. She found some clean clothes and jumped into a quick shower before dressing and brushing her teeth. Feeling clean and getting the still-kind-of-drunk taste out of her mouth, Darcy went back to try to get Loki out of bed.

"There's good hangover breakfast across the street," Darcy said, yanking on Loki's ankle. "Then we can go to the theatre and you can yell at me for not being fast enough during the changes some more. You like that."

Loki finally sat up again and glared at his knees. "You're going to kill me," he said as he shuffled down toward the foot of the bed so he could stand.

His hair was a big, almost-curly mess that threatened to swallow anything that came near it, but Loki didn't seem to notice.

"Here." Darcy reached into the bathroom and grabbed her brush. She handed it to Loki, watching him as he tried to figure out why she gave it to him. He finally seemed to get it and quickly brushed out his hair, either not noticing or not caring about all the snapping and pulling that was happening. When he was done, he tossed the brush onto the bed and shrugged.

"Now where are you taking me?" he asked.

Darcy grabbed up her keys and her bag. "Breakfast, because I want breakfast. And then the hotel," she said as she made sure she had everything. Not noticing anything missing, she opened the door and waited for Loki to go outside.

IHOP was not, strictly speaking, across the street. It was across the street and up on the next corner. And then across that street, but Loki didn't comment on this as they drove the short distance to the diner.

Darcy ordered Loki the same thing she always got, and was a little surprised when he started right in, using the bacon to mash his eggs up in the hash browns. Maybe it was just her cooking he didn't trust.

Loki seemed to drift in and out as they ate, and at first, Darcy thought he was falling asleep again. But when he refilled his coffee for the third time, and started to look generally more awake, Darcy began to wonder if something was distracting him.

"Something up?" she asked, catching him looking out the window at the traffic.

Loki snapped his attention back to Darcy. "What? No. It's fine."

"What's fine?" asked Darcy. She broke off a piece of her perfectly-burnt toast and smashed it into the egg on her plate.

"It," said Loki.

Darcy didn't know what that meant, and it was too early for riddles, so she ignored it.

When they were done, Loki surprised her again by paying. He even seemed almost sober enough to go through rehearsal. Darcy couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not. At the casino, parked in her usual spot by the green room door and looked over at Loki so she could take her cue off him. He sat next to her in silence, looking off into the distance.

"So... Are we working today, or are you taking a hangover day?" she asked.

Loki looked over at her, looking like he was still trying to decide. When he finally unfastened his seatbelt, Darcy assumed that Loki's lack of response meant that he was taking a hangover day, but he surprised her instead by leaning over the centre console and kissing her. It happened so suddenly that Darcy didn't even know how to react. Even after Loki leaned away again, still looking a little confused, Darcy still didn't know what to do.

"Uh. What?" she asked.

"I've wanted to do that since last night," Loki said.

Darcy wondered why he hadn't done it last night, then. Especially since they were both drunk and statistically more likely to do something regrettable.

"Okay," Darcy said. What else could she say?

Before she could come up with anything else, Loki leaned over and kissed her again. A million things ran through Darcy's head at once. Loki was her boss, and a massive prick almost all of the time. But Darcy also hadn't had any kind of sex with another human being since fall term, and maybe she was still a little drunk, because after the initial shock wore off, she leaned as far over as her seatbelt would let her and kissed him back. Between her seatbelt and the centre console being in the way, it was an awkward, messy kiss, and it ended quickly.

Darcy took advantage of the break and unbuckled her seatbelt. "Wait a minute," she said, suddenly remembering what Loki had told her the day before. "I thought you said you were gay."

Loki reacted like he'd been slapped. "I never said that," he said.

"Yeah you did. When we were at Bonnie Springs," Darcy said. She remembered it clearly.

Loki got that smug, irritated look he wore when he thought someone was being an idiot. "I said I'm not in the closet about anything. Any logical fallacy after that is your own doing."

Darcy thought back, trying to remember exactly what was said, but she couldn't actually remember the conversation as clearly as she thought.

"Oh," she said.

She figured whatever mood had stuck them was probably long gone, so she got out of the car and tried not to feel super awkward about what had just happened. A big part of her wanted to call off and go hide for the rest of the day, but Loki hadn't actually given her the day off yet.

Loki lingered behind while Darcy unlocked the green room door and let herself in. While she waited for Loki to decide what he wanted to do, she turned on the lights and fed the fish. After that, she had no idea what to do, so she sat down on the sofa just as Loki came in. He sat down on the other side, looking thoughtful again. Darcy wanted to tell him that he might hurt himself from all that thinking, but she kept her mouth shut for once. The male ego was already so fragile, and downright dangerous when damaged. Darcy wasn't exactly afraid of Loki, but he had the potential to be very frightening.

Darcy expected some sort of stupid guilt trip, or an ultimatum involving the security of her job, but she got neither. Without much warning at all, Loki reached out for her and pulled her close, managing to shift so that she wound up on top of him, while he halfway laid down on the sofa.

"Er. Hi?" Darcy said.

Loki rested one arm over the top of the sofa and leaned back more comfortably. With his other hand, he reached out and moved Darcy's hair away from her face, before reaching for her glasses.

"I hate these things," he said as he slid them off her face.

Darcy shifted to free her hands and reached out to stop him. "I like them."

"They get in the way," Loki said.

"Of what?" asked Darcy.

Loki answered without words. He started kissing her again, but not on the mouth. He trailed hard, lingering kisses along her jaw and neck, sharp beard stubble scratching against her skin. Darcy shifted on top of him, not sure if she wanted to get away or let him keep going. As she lifted her weight, Loki moved beneath her, putting himself in a better position to be straddled. Darcy slid her knees apart just enough to get comfortable, the new position making Loki's growing hard-on evident.

Suddenly, having someone beneath her in a completely sexual way was exactly what she wanted. After almost a year of exclusive vibrator action, Darcy forgot all about her reservations in favour of an actual man beneath her. She stopped reacting and started responding to Loki's efforts, leaning her head back to expose her neck while she moved against him. For a moment, everything was perfect, until Loki stopped suddenly and tensed up.

"Not here," he said, looking toward the door that opened to the hall. It was locked, but enough people had the key that the lock was basically useless.

Darcy looked down at him, taking a few moments to realise his intent. There was a question in his eyes, and Darcy answered by getting up and grabbing her bag so she could follow Loki up to his room.


	17. Chapter 17

Loki woke with more hair than he was used to covering his face. He spat it out of his mouth and brushed it away as quietly as he could before sitting up to lean on his elbows. Darcy slept quietly beside him, mercifully keeping to her own side of the bed and not crowding him. He was inclined to blame that on the summer heat, and the fact that neither of them had the presence of mind to turn on the air conditioner before they fell into bed together.

Loki watched her without really seeing her as he considered the likely outcomes when she woke. Darcy getting angry and quitting was high on the list, but somehow he didn't think she would. More likely, he thought, she might actually assume some sort of sickeningly domestic relationship had sprung up out of the desert between them, hopefully making it easier to get her to play the double agent without realising it. He hadn't even realised it might have been possible to get her into bed until waking up hungover in hers, and was almost surprised at how easy it had been.

Or maybe everything he'd heard about Americans had been true.

Darcy's phone dinging in her bag on the floor made Loki realise suddenly that no matter how poorly she might react to the decision she would surely try to blame on the litres of alcohol they'd consumed, Loki could still force a win in his favour. He slowly extricated himself from the bed and reached for his trousers, finding his own phone in his pocket. As he pulled up the near-empty contact list, he carefully slid Darcy's phone from her bag. He kept one eye over his shoulder, watching for her to wake up and start shouting while he poked at her phone for her contact list. Once he found it, he scrolled through and copied one of the numbers to his own phone, saving it for later.

With Darcy still asleep and none the wiser, he put both phones back where he'd found them and strongly considered crawling back into bed and sleeping for the rest of the day. But he knew that if he did that, he'd never adjust to the timezone, and he'd just be fucked forever. Instead, he found something clean to wear and took a very long shower in an attempt to wash away the last bits of hangover fog still making his head feel heavy. When he'd almost exhausted the hot water, he dressed and quietly slipped out of the room and made his way down to Darcy's dressing room. Hers was the bigger of the two, a decision Loki had made entirely because she had more changes than he did, and he had the green room to do with as he pleased anyway. The green room which was slowly coming along, but still needed a lot of work before it was comfortable.

Loki picked up the green dress from the rack, checking quickly to be sure it was the one held together with magnet strips, and took it back upstairs.

Darcy was still asleep, sprawled out across the bed and oblivious to Loki's absence and her complete exposure to the room. Loki took a few seconds to admire the view and then draped her dress over the chair by the window and leaned down next to her, gently nudging her awake.

"What?" Darcy asked.

"Time to get to work," Loki told her. As much as he would have loved the extra day off himself, he knew they couldn't afford it.

"What? No," said Darcy, trying to turn away.

"Yep. Take a shower if you want. I'll be downstairs." He laid a gentle kiss on her forehead and left her alone again, trusting her to eventually get up and come to work.

When she finally did over half an hour later, she was wearing the same thing she was wearing that morning.

"No. Go change," Loki told her, pointing back toward the dressing rooms.

"I can't. I'm too tired to work on that one," she complained, flopping down into one of the front row seats in the house.

Loki stood up on the stage with his hands on his hips. "If this is how you are, I'm going to have to ban drinking before show nights," he said, completely serious.

"God, seriously? What is wrong with you?" Darcy asked.

"What's wrong with you?" Loki asked before he could stop himself. He was supposed to be pretending to like her, but she wasn't making it easy.

"Well, at least nothing's changed," she muttered.

"Including you. Go. Now," Loki said.

Darcy growled loudly and hauled herself out of her chair. As she left, Loki scrolled through the saved numbers on his phone, trying to decide if he wanted questionable Chinese for lunch, or expensive sandwiches. The Chinese was cheaper, but the sandwiches didn't make him feel like he had flu by the end of the night. It didn't take long for him to settle on the deli, not wanting to risk a trip to the hospital when he already felt like baked roadkill.

By the time Darcy finally came back out of the dressing room, Loki had fallen asleep in one of the house seats, waking up when he heard Darcy squawking about how something was unfair.

"What?" he asked, sitting up quickly.

"How come you get to go back to sleep, but I don't?" Darcy asked from the stage.

Loki looked at the time on his phone. "How long were you in there?" he asked. He got up and stepped up onto the stage, walking straight to Darcy.

The dress had been designed to put itself together, and still she somehow managed to get it bunched up weirdly and misaligned. Sick of trying to explain how magnets worked, Loki reached out to adjust them himself, only realising it might not be well-received when Darcy tensed up. But instead of slapping him away, she twisted to give him better access. Loki pulled the seam apart and let it go so it clicked into place and sat perfectly along her side. He did the same to the other side, making the dress look like the tailored work of art it was, and not an ugly green sack.

"Don't put it together. It puts itself together," he said.

"How the hell did you do that?" Darcy asked, looking down at herself.

Loki smoothed his hand over the seam to flatten out the fabric and stepped away. "Have you even seen my pain in the ass change?" he asked.

"Like, not on a hanger? No," Darcy said.

Loki walked back to his dressing room and grabbed the white change suit. Darcy had a long series of changes, from one gown to another, but Loki had many layers all at once. He brought the suit out and handed it to Darcy, standing aside while she got a good look at the three-piece suit, with shirt and tie, that had been designed to be put on in under four seconds.

"Jesus Christ," she said, trying to get between the waistcoat and the shirt.

"And the black one is just like it, only without the waistcoat," he said.

Darcy gaped for a few long moments before handing it back. "Okay, but I'm always worried something will get stuck on the wrong part, or something. How do I keep it from doing that?"

Loki sighed. "By being quick. Tear it off. It will survive."

Darcy seemed less than convinced.

"This is the finale. You need to have it perfect," Loki told her.

"Okay, Mister Perfect. I've never seen you do it. Show me how it's done," Darcy said.

Loki was certain it was just petulance talking, but he was growing weary of the whole thing. Without thinking much of it, he kicked off his shoes and undressed down to his underwear right there on the stage.

"Oh my God, are you serious?" Darcy said in a strange, high-pitched voice.

Loki looked at her pointedly as he pulled the suit off the hanger and stepped behind the opaque curtain behind him. Without having to pull off the first costume, he managed to dress even more quickly than he would on stage, pulling the top half on like a jacket, and snapping the trousers on immediately after. He stepped back into view again only seconds later and shrugged.

"Okay, this is actual witchcraft. Screw you and the Pendragons and everyone else," Darcy complained.

Before Loki could say anything damaging in return, his phone started ringing. He scrambled to find it, checking first the trousers he was wearing, then the ones on the floor, before remembering he'd left it where he was sitting in the house. He managed to snatch it up before it went to voicemail, finding an annoyed delivery boy on the other end of the line.

Loki gave up on rehearsal about an hour after they finished lunch. Neither of them were in the mood for any of it, and would have wound up killing one another if Darcy stayed much longer.

Of course, once he told her she could go, she became oddly reluctant to leave.

"So, like," she said, standing awkwardly near the outside door. "Are you... Are you staying here, or...?"

It took Loki a moment to realise what she was dancing around. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I have some things I should take care of, while I can. You're welcome to stay here until I return, but they haven't had the cable or WiFi hooked up yet. All you get is snow."

Darcy looked both relieved and disappointed at once. "Yeah, okay," she said. "I guess I'll, uh. See you later, then."

Loki watched her go, wondering if he'd made the wrong choice. He waited until he heard her car start before setting the alarm on his phone and collapsing onto the sofa.

He woke three hours later with a head full of bees and hate. Bees, because the alarm on his phone always made him feel like he had them, and hate because of the bees. He sat up and turned off the terrible noise, trying to kick start himself into getting up and getting going. It took a few minutes, but he finally managed to haul himself up. For a brief moment, he considered just getting in his car and leaving, but it wouldn't do. Not as he was, in a wrinkled shirt and his hair a complete rat's nest. He went back upstairs to clean up, and decided to even put on one of his jackets, despite the heat. As he stood in front of the mirror, trying to tame his hair, he realised that what he really needed was to dress to humiliate. He changed into one of his black shirts and found one of his gold ties, putting it on quickly.

When he was finally satisfied, he dug through his map history on his phone and found the address on Hualapai. Hoping it was late enough in the day, Loki pulled up the directions to the address and walked out to his car. He regretted its paint job as he got settled, but not everything could be perfect. Maybe it would go unnoticed.

The address wound up being only a few blocks north of Flamingo, in an apartment complex behind a stone wall and heavy gate. Loki examined the keypad at the gate, quickly finding that it also served as a directory of sorts, listing each apartment number. Loki selected the one just before Thor's and waited for something to happen.

"Hello?" a confused voice on the intercom answered.

"Hi, I'm looking for Don Blake," Loki said, trying to sound as Icelandic and foreign as possible. "Are you his housemate?"

"Oh, no. He's next door. I can let you in though. Hang on."

Something beeped through the intercom and the gate slowly started to open. Loki called out his thanks and drove through the gate, wondering how many break-ins had been reported in the area. He found a space near Thor's apartment and parked, not caring if it belonged to someone else. He couldn't see anything going on in the apartment from where he was, but it was still the early hours of dusk, before lights started coming on. He did, however, see the white truck he knew to be Thor's, so he hadn't made the drive for nothing.

Loki tapped his fingers on his phone for a few moments before deciding on exactly what to do. He pulled up the number he'd stolen from Darcy's phone and sent off a text with two simple words in English: "come outside."

It took only seconds for Thor to respond, asking who was texting him. Grinning to himself, Loki dialled the number and was surprised when Thor actually answered.

"I think you should come outside," he said in Icelandic.

On the other end of the line, he heard something bang loudly over top Thor swearing, just before it went dead. Loki locked his phone and stepped out of the car, leaning casually against the bonnet as Thor stomped down the stairs and into view.

"What are you doing here, Loki?" Thor demanded in Icelandic that sounded even worse than Loki's. It was almost funny, if it hadn't been painful to listen to.

"What is this accent?" Loki asked with a sneer.

"You're one to talk," said Thor. He crossed his arms over his chest, like he was trying to look threatening. It might have worked on the other gym rats, but Loki wasn't impressed.

"Isn't this what you wanted? 'Round them all up and throw them out'?" Loki asked. "'Save the resources for the people who belong here'? But really, what is this accent? Is this your idea of Norwegian?"

Thor glowered darkly at him. "Not you," he said. "I never meant you."

Loki laughed. He wasn't sure what he expected to find in Thor after so long, but somehow, he wasn't living up to the expectation. "But you. You couldn't get it your way, so you went to be a drain on someone else's country. Don't you think that's just a little ironic?"

Thor took a step closer to Loki, looking almost murderous. For some reason, Loki found it hilarious.

"What are you doing here, Loki?" Thor repeated stiffly.

Loki grinned and held out his hands. "I live here. I have a headlining act not too far off-Strip. I even have a, well. She'd be lovely if she kept her mouth shut, but a capable assistant. She won't last long, though."

He tried not to laugh as Thor's expression darkened further. "You," he said. "You're the reason she dropped out. Have you fucked her yet? I hear you fuck all your assistants and then fire them."

Loki shrugged. He couldn't exactly argue. He had even technically fired Katrín. "Oh, let me guess. If I hurt her, you'll punch me through a wall." Loki rolled his eyes, certain Thor wouldn't even try.

Thor snorted. "If you hurt her, there won't be anything left for me to punch by the time she's done with you."

Loki leaned back and laughed. Thor actually thought he had some power in this situation. "Your girlfriend. You've been with her for two years, now?"

"Three," said Thor darkly. "We're waiting until I finish school to get a house together."

"And how sweet. Does she know what you are?"

Thor didn't answer. He stood, glaring hatred at Loki. Loki wondered if his face would actually start turning red if he frowned any harder.

"She doesn't," he inferred. "You've been with this woman for three years, and she doesn't know the monster she takes to her bed. Doesn't that frighten you?"

Loki laughed and shook his head. Thor must have been missing something not to realise that he played a dangerous game.

"Does it frighten you, knowing what Dad will do to you when he gets his hands on you?" asked Thor, trying to turn the conversation back to Loki. But all it did was give Loki another nerve to poke at.

"They still celebrate your birthday, you know. Every year," he said.

Thor's anger was replaced with something that Loki almost mistook for guilt, but that wasn't right. Regret, maybe.

"I know," said Thor.

It wasn't the response Loki expected, making him mentally stumble over what to say next. "You know? How the-"

He realised the answer to his question before he even asked it, and became angry all over again. Of course Thor knew. Of course he could afford to go to medical school in America, and live in a $1500 a month apartment.

"That son of a bitch. That's how you did it. That's how you disappeared and changed your name, and that's why it took me so long to find you. He set this all up for you." Loki stood up straight, meeting Thor in the eye and finding him a little shorter than he remembered. "How much money did he throw at you to bury your mistakes, while I rented out someone's disgusting basement because I couldn't afford anything with carpeting?"

Thor took a step back and shrugged. "That's the path you chose, Loki."

"Yes. And I worked for everything I have now. I deserve it. You don't deserve anything you have. It was all handed to you. You don't know what work is." Loki still hadn't been sure what he was going to do in the long term, but now he knew. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and he was going to enjoy every minute of it.

He walked back around the car and opened the door.

"Enjoy what you have while you can, brother," Loki said. "It won't last."

He got into the car and backed out of the space, leaving Thor up on the sidewalk looking like he'd just discovered his car had been keyed. It was a good look on him, Loki thought. He couldn't wait to see it again.


	18. Chapter 18

Nothing on this account will be deleted, but updating to FFN has become more difficult lately, since I primarily write and go online via my tablet these days. FFN is not very Android friendly, and it often takes me several attempts to upload a chapter without getting the formatting completely screwed up.

Coupled with the fact that readers cannot copy and paste or download fic from FFN, I will not be updating here any longer. I disagree with my fic not being able to be accessible to everyone, and since FFN is not compatible with screen readers and doesn't allow users to download fic to other devices, I'm not really comfortable continuing to use their site.

You can still find me on AO3 under this same username (LokiOfSassgaard), where I am posting far more regularly than I do here.


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